Yuba Patients File Suit Against County

April 2, 2015 Yuba County---Today, members of the Yuba Patients Coalition filed an amended lawsuit in Yuba County Superior Court seeking a temporary restraining order (TRO) postponing the effective date of Yuba County’s medical marijuana cultivation ordinance (Ordinance No. 1538).

View Filed Documents Here

The immediate goal of the legal challenge is to restore the democratic power of the referendum to the citizens of Yuba County, since that power was stripped from the citizens by the Yuba County Board of Supervisors when they passed Ordinance No. 1538 as an urgency ordinance, based on inadequate finding of urgency.

The Yuba County marijuana cultivation ordinance bans all outdoor cultivation within the County, and restricts any cultivation of marijuana to 12 plants, within a permitted accessory structure. Yuba Patients Coalition said "This deprives qualified medical marijuana patients of their right to cultivate the medicine they need to alleviate their suffering."

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are: Woodrow George Powers, Patty Mowery, Theresa Morris, George Benson, Norma Hutchins, Eric Salerno and the Yuba Patients Coalition.

The suit claims that the County acted in bad faith by passing Ordinance No. 1538 as an urgency ordinance to evade the referendum process. The Board of Supervisors was well aware of the referendum being prepared by the Yuba Patients Coalition and created the urgency ordinance to thwart that specific petition process.

Yuba Patients Coalition representatives claim "statements made on the County’s website for its Code Enforcement Department make it is clear that the department never had any intention of implementing the new law until April 27th.

According to Joe Elford, the attorney representing the individually named plaintiffs and the Yuba Patients Coalition, “the Yuba County medical marijuana cultivation ordinance is not only extremely cruel to the many seriously ill citizens of Yuba County who will be deprived of the medicine they need to alleviate their suffering, but it is also illegal. The ordinance should never have been passed at all, since it discriminates against poor medical marijuana patients, much less should it have been hastily enacted as an urgency ordinance, which deprives the people of Yuba County of the democratic power of the referendum.”

The TRO hearing will be held on Friday, April 3, 2015 at 8:30 a.m., in a department to be announced. The Yuba County Superior Court is located at 215 5th Street, Marysville, California.