WASHINGTON — The U.S. government sided with Colorado in a dispute with Nebraska and Oklahoma over legalization of marijuana. The feds urged the United States Supreme Court to not hear the challenge to Colorado’s recreational marijuana laws, according to the Denver Post.
The Solicitor General of the Department of Justice filed the brief with the Supreme Court seven months after the high court asked the government for an opinion on the lawsuit the two neighboring states filed against Colorado.
The lawsuit filed by Nebraska and Oklahoma essentially says legalized recreational marijuana in Colorado is causing people to come into their states and break marijuana laws.
Nebraska has said it wants Colorado to pay for local drug enforcement in its state.
In its brief for the Supreme Court, the government questions whether the complaint from Nebraska and Oklahoma is within the high court’s original jurisdiction. “Entertaining the type of dispute at issue here — essentially that one State’s laws make it more likely that third parties will violate federal and state law in another State — would represent a substantial and unwarranted expansion of this Court’s original jurisdiction.”