One of the hemp industry’s most consequential court rulings originated from an inauspicious North Carolina employment discrimination lawsuit.
In 2021, Guilford County resident Tonya Anderson sued her employer of four months, Diamondback Investment Group, after she was fired for failing two drug tests. Anderson denied consuming marijuana but said that, on her doctor’s advice, she took hemp-derived products for anxiety and chronic pain. Anderson argued that Diamondback had violated the Americans with Disabilities Act as well as a state law that says companies can’t ban employees from using legal products.
A federal judge rejected her claims, and in 2024 so did a unanimous panel of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. The judges ruled that Anderson hadn’t proven that the products she used were legal.
More interesting to the hemp industry was what the judges said about Diamondback’s argument, that because Anderson admitted to taking THCO—which the DEA had deemed an illegal synthetic—she couldn’t say she’d only taken legal hemp.
Two of the panel’s three judges said the DEA got the law wrong. Building off a 2022 ruling from the 9th Circuit in California, the judges wrote that the Farm Bill applies to all products derived from hemp, regardless of how they’re manufactured. And thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court curtailing federal agencies’ powers, they said courts no longer need to consider the DEA’s opinion.
The DEA hasn’t dropped the issue. In May, the agency classified HHC, another hemp-derived synthetic cannabinoid, as illegal. Hemp companies quickly challenged the rule in federal court. Even if they succeed, HHC and other synthetic cannabinoids—delta-8, delta-6, THCO, THCP—will be banned by the federal law that is set to take effect in November.
