Loose cannabis is like spilled beer, not open container in car, state Supreme Court rules
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- A California Supreme Court ruling set a sharper boundary around what can be considered an “open container” of cannabis in a vehicle.
- The court ruled that the cannabis product must be rolled or otherwise ready to consume in order to meet a similar standard that is applied to alcohol during traffic stops.
- The case involved a police search of a vehicle that was justified by the presence of “scattered bits of marijuana” on the floor behind the passenger seat.
California cops can’t stop or cite drivers under the state’s “open container” rules for cannabis unless the product is rolled or otherwise ready to consume, the California Supreme Court ruled Friday.
“The question before us is whether a small amount of loose marijuana scattered on the rear floor of a car violates [the open container] provision,” Justice Goodwin Liu wrote for the court. “We hold it does not.”
The case arose after Sacramento police spotted a dusting of loose “crumbs” in the back of a car they had pulled over for a rolling stop. The debris weighed about a third of a gram — roughly the same as a dollar bill, or the contents of an average joint — and was not “accessible for consumption,” according to the decision.
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Nevertheless, police cited the “open container” law as probable cause to search the car, and turned up an unregistered handgun, for which the passenger was charged.
“No officer suggested he was concerned that [the driver or passenger] could have somehow, while riding in the front of the car, collected the scattered bits of marijuana from the rear floor behind [the passenger] for imminent consumption,” Liu wrote. “The officers had no reason to believe that any marijuana was recently rolled, and the officers did not suspect impaired driving, underscoring the disconnect between the scattered bits of loose marijuana on the rear floor and potential for imminent consumption.”
Friday’s decision draws a much sharper boundary around what can be considered an “open container” under California law. Liu wrote that, until recently, the “provisions have been relevant primarily in the context of alcohol.”
“Although the ‘open container’ concept as applied to marijuana reflects the same purpose, alcohol and marijuana are materially different,” the judge said.
It’s relatively easy to grab an open beer from the back seat while driving, but much harder to pack a pipe or roll a joint with bits of flower off the floorboards, the court held.
Courts have previously ruled that an “unburned blunt” on the lap of a passenger violates the open container law because it’s ready to be used, while remnants of ash and flecks of pot in the center console and the driver’s lap did not, because it fell below the threshold of a “usable amount.”
The state’s high court handed down a decision Monday that vacated court fines for an alleged prison gang leader, setting a precedent that advocates said will help indigent defendants in other cases.
Friday’s decision sets aside that “usable amount” metric in favor of an accessibility test.
“Marijuana that is not in a state to be consumed or that cannot be reached ‘while driving, operating, or riding’ in a vehicle has no potential for impaired driving,” Liu wrote. “While marijuana in a sealed container is neither readily accessible nor imminently usable and thus does not violate the open container statute, marijuana in a vehicle need not be in a sealed container to be lawful.”
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