PROVIDENCE, Nearly 100 cannabis businesses are stuck waiting after a federal judge this week blocked Rhode Island from handing out 20 new retail licenses, halting a lottery that was supposed to run as soon as May.

U.S. District Court Judge Melissa DuBose issued a preliminary injunction Wednesday against the Rhode Island Cannabis Control Commission, freezing all application screening and review. The order came in response to three separate federal lawsuits challenging the state’s residency requirement for retail licenses. No lottery. No reviews. Nothing moves until the court says otherwise.

“It’s very disheartening right now,” said Jason Calderon, a cultivator who applied for a retail license in North Kingstown. “This most certainly could have been avoided. All we’ve done now is give more time to the existing monopolies to be a monopoly.”

Hard to argue with that.

The legal fight traces back to May 2024, when California cannabis entrepreneur Justyna Jensen sued the Cannabis Control Commission in U.S. District Court in Providence. Her argument: Rhode Island’s residency requirement for licenses under the state’s 2022 Cannabis Act violated interstate commerce protections under the U.S. Constitution. Jensen had filed similar lawsuits in other states, including California and New York. She also noted in her initial filing that she planned to be a majority owner of a social equity business, a specialty license category reserved for people adversely affected by the war on drugs.

A Florida resident named John Kenney filed a second federal lawsuit in May 2024 making the same basic argument. Then Justin Palmore of California filed a third lawsuit on Nov. 24, 2025. Three suits, same core complaint.

None of the three plaintiffs were among the 97 businesses that actually applied for licenses after Rhode Island put out a call for applications late last year.

So the people suing aren’t even in the applicant pool. But the 97 who are? They’re the ones paying the price.

Rhode Island’s Cannabis Act, passed by state lawmakers in 2022, called for 24 new retail stores across the state. Six licenses were set aside for social equity applicants. Another six were reserved for worker-owned cooperative stores. The law does allow out-of-state investors and ownership, but the residency requirement for the license holder itself is what drew the legal fire.

Not every license type received an application in each of the state’s six geographic zones, which whittled the maximum number of available licenses down to 20.

Charon Rose, spokesperson for the commission, said Friday that regulators were reviewing the ruling’s implications for the adult-use retail licensing program. “At this time, the commission is not in a position to provide a definitive timeline,” Rose said in an email to Rhode Island Current. “Additional guidance will be provided as it becomes available.”

That’s a lot of words for “we don’t know.”

DuBose didn’t mince hers, though. In her order, she wrote that the commission had pressed forward with its licensing plan despite knowing the law faced active legal challenges. “Knowing the Act was facing legal challenges… CCC continued forward with its plan to implement the Act and its licensing scheme,” she wrote. “The resulting fall-out will be, to be blunt, self-inflicted.”

The ruling carries real lessons for California regulators too. The Department of Cannabis Control has faced its own share of residency and equity-related legal scrutiny over the years, and any state that builds licensing frameworks around geographic restrictions is vulnerable to the same Commerce Clause arguments Jensen and the other plaintiffs are pressing in Rhode Island. Federal courts have been increasingly skeptical of state cannabis laws that restrict participation based on where someone lives.

The Rhode Island situation also underscores a tension that runs through cannabis licensing fights everywhere: equity goals and constitutional commerce rules don’t always point in the same direction. States want to prioritize local communities and people harmed by drug enforcement. Federal courts keep asking whether those priorities can hold up against the Commerce Clause.

Reporting by Marijuana Moment first flagged the ruling, drawing on original reporting by Christopher Shea of Rhode Island Current.

For Calderon and the other 96 applicants sitting in limbo, spring just got a lot longer. The lottery they applied for by a December 29, 2025, deadline could be months away now. Or longer. And the established players who already hold licenses keep operating while everyone waits for the courts to sort it out.