The answer to this is likely ‘federal supremacy’, but here goes:
Marijuana is state legal in Colorado.
Sessions follows through on various threats, and DEA agents show up at Paul’s Pot Palace and attempt to take Paul and his pot away.
Paul, seeing them preparing outside, calls his local sheriff and requests protection from a group of armed intruders preparing to kidnap and rob him.
I know in the real world the sheriff isn’t likely to do anything - but, given that Paul is not breaking any state law, should he expect help? Armed deputies blocking the DEA agents from entering, sort of a reverse Little Rock?
It’s been my general understanding that the local LEOs won’t assist the DEA unless the confrontation turns violent. They aren’t likely to even show up if the feds tell them they’re going after a legal dispensary and request assistance.
But with your hypothetical and the business owner calling I’d expect them to show up and then just stand down and monitor the situation.
This has happened before. There was a wee bit of a scuffle where the Supremacy Clause was tested out. Pretty much nobody is willing to contest the point.
So yeah, Paul is going to Federal prison. On the bright side, supposedly there’s less shanking and rape in ‘club fed’. Maybe since Paul’s offense was not violent, he’ll be housed with the white collar financial fraudsters and other reasonably decent to be around prisoners.
I know someone who worked for a “collective”* in another county. One day the DEA barged in with sheriff’s deputies in tow and ransacked the place; while the Feds were so engaged the deputies just stood around with arms folded, or went outside and smoked (cigarettes). One of them confided to my acquaintance that they would much rather have been going after a meth lab just down the road, but when Washington called they had to answer.
*An entity which was kindasorta allowed under SoW law at the time to allow medical consumers to share resources; they’ve since been closed down and folded into the retail system with an endorsement that allows them to sell to registered medical users at reduced prices.
States have their laws–which they enforce. The federal government has its laws–which it enforces. Sometimes the two cooperate; sometimes they don’t.
The big area where you see a conflict happening now is immigration laws. There are large numbers of local law enforcement organizations which refuse to cooperate with federal immigration raids.
Paul isn’t being kidnapped and robbed. He is being arrested under federal law. State law says it’s legal under state law but says nothing about federal law. The sheriff does nothing unless he wants to be arrested for interfering with the federal investigation. Just like with any other federal investigation.
That conflict is greatly overblown. Except in those places that joined a specific federal program voluntarily local law enforcement did not riutinely get involved in raids. What is actually an issue is some jurisdictions refusing to enforce ICE detainers on those they arrest.
The conflict I want to see is the states going after the Federal government for lost tax revenue if the DEA starts cracking down on taxed-and-regulated marijuana operations.
What I would like to see is the states challenging the feds on their right to pass a law concerning a commodity that is produced and consumed inside the state. No interstate commerce involved.
It seems pretty clear to me that the 10th amendment is a limit on the supremacy clause. The so-called strict constructionists ought to love it, although they probably won’t.
Nothing stops the Supreme Court from distinguishing or even reversing one of its earlier cases. I doubt they’d reverse Wickard, but they could distinguish it. There was a legal national/interstate market for grain in the 1930s, with grain routinely shipped across state lines even if the particular farmer in Wickard wasn’t shipping his grain anywhere. There are only intrastate legal markets for marijuana in certain states because those state governments consciously chose to create one.
Following up on my own post, the Supremes followed Wickard in Gonzales_v._Raich in 2005, regarding home growing of medical marijuana.
But that was when only 10 states had legal medical marijuana and no state had legal recreational marijuana. Now nearly as many states (9) have legal recreational marijuana, and more that half of the states have at least legal medical marijuana. The Supreme Court follows the election returns, as the saying goes, and I would be nervous if I was the Attorney General that muscular direct enforcement of the federal marijuana laws in legal-marijuana states would create a test case that would proceed to the Supreme Court.
The issues such a case would raise don’t break down easily as liberal vs. conservative, as shown by who dissented or concurred in Gonzalez v. Raich. Limiting interstate-commerce regulation under Wickard is a conservative idea, but so is upholding the federal marijuana laws. Limiting Wickard would make some liberals nervous for the effect on other federal regulations, but there’s little love lost for strict federal marijuana laws when many states have chosen a different path. I’m not sure one could guess aforehand how either Sotomayor or Gorsuch would vote.
