Humboldt County has settled a federal lawsuit challenging its cannabis abatement program, agreeing to withdraw penalties and change how it handles alleged code violations.
Five property owners sued the county in 2022 after facing fines as high as $10,000 per day for allegedly growing cannabis without permits.
The property owners said they weren’t growing cannabis and accused the county of relying on old satellite images, including images showing activity by previous owners, without conducting further inspections.
They also said they waited years for hearings while penalties continued to accrue, violating their due process rights and the Eighth Amendment’s protection against excessive fines.
The Institute for Justice, which represented the plaintiffs, said Humboldt County has imposed hundreds of millions of dollars in cannabis-related penalties. The county did not admit wrongdoing as part of the settlement.
As part of the settlement, the county will drop the challenged fines and reform its abatement program.
Jared McClain, an Institute for Justice attorney, said his clients are relieved.
“The process obviously took much longer than they wanted,” he said. “But the legacy that they were able to leave was that it will never have to take so long for anyone else going forward.”
Under the settlement, the county must warn property owners before issuing a notice of violation, explain the alleged violation and give them 30 days to respond.
New owners generally cannot be penalized for a past owners’ illegal grows.
“We wanted to make some broad policy changes and to make sure that this couldn't happen again,” McClain said. “We went through their code, and all the things that we had alleged were unconstitutional as part of the settlement agreement… the county now has to change all of those parts of its code.”
Humboldt County will also issue a public retraction of false allegations made against the plaintiffs and pay $350,000 for their legal costs.
A federal judge initially dismissed the case, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals largely reversed that decision, ruling plaintiffs could challenge the fines under the Eighth Amendment.
“If the government tells you that you owe it some massive fine, you can now bring a federal lawsuit under the excessive fines clause to challenge that fine without paying it first and without going through the county's administrative process,” McClain said.
Because the ruling establishes precedent in the 9th Circuit, it could affect similar disputes in the nine Western states under the court’s jurisdiction, including Oregon.
