The legal fight over the Office of Cannabis Management’s seizure of illegal cannabis products from state-licensed hemp stores is fascinating.

So is the state’s response to a state Supreme Court ruling saying the seizures violate the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Super Smoke N Save LLC et al v. New York State Cannabis Control Board et al and centers on the search of five New York City area businesses and the seizure of materials from those businesses by the Office of Cannabis Management.

In January 2025, state Supreme Court Justice Thomas Marcelle ruled that Office of Cannabis Management searches of legal hemp shops in the New York City area constituted warrantless search and seizures in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Marcelle ruled the New York City Sheriff’s office was barred from conducting warrantless searches of businesses that appear on the state Office of Cannabis Management’s directory of Cannabinoid Hemp Retail Licenses maintained under the state’s Cannabis Law while also ordering anything seized as part of a warrantless search to be returned to the businesses.

“In short, while the Constitution okays warrantless searches in some situations, it never gives the go ahead to unreasonable ones,” Marcelle wrote. “Here, the searches’ purpose and their manner of execution seem deeply removed from any reasonable administrative search.”

The decision has since been appealed to the Third Department Appellate Division, but while the appeal is decided state lawmakers have introduced legislation seeking to place into state law the behavior Justice Marcelle said violates the U.S. Constitution. A.11186/S.9924, according to sponsors Crystal Peoples-Stokes and Jeremy Cooney, would place into state law the enforcement procedures the Office of Cannabis Management had been using to seize illegal products from the state-licensed hemp shops.

“The injunction is premised on the fact that OCM’s procedures, while they do place guidelines on how inspections are conducted, are not codified in law. This bill would rectify that issue,” Peoples-Stokes and Cooney wrote in their legislative justification.

But that’s not really what Marcelle is saying. The Office of Cannabis Management has all the legal authority it needs to close down unlicensed businesses selling illegal marijuana products. His decision focuses on searches that are supposed to be administrative in nature turning into seizures of products. Marcelle said, in essence, that a warrant is needed to seize items from state-licensed businesses because the inspection began as an administrative matter but then turned into a police-related search and seizure.

We agree with Marcelle’s decision. The Office of Cannabis Management should need a search warrant to seize the illegal products. Even those accused of crimes have rights – and the state Legislature shouldn’t be in the business of trampling on them under the guise of “codifying” a behavior the state Supreme Court has said is illegal.