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Audio transcript (~2 min read)
This is the New Realm Compliance Brief, Volume One, Edition Fifteen, for Saturday, August twenty-ninth.
Our top story: a Travis County, Texas judge took up a request Friday afternoon to temporarily pause enforcement of the state health department's new THC standards. Those standards, in effect since the end of July, treat delta eight, delta ten, and THCA flower as Schedule One substances, leaving only naturally occurring trace amounts and delta nine hemp products at or under zero point three percent. The hemp businesses behind the suit, filed August nineteenth, argue the state is applying an undefined trace-amount standard without formal rulemaking. Mark Bordas of the Texas Hemp Business Council said continued enforcement puts an eleven billion dollar a year industry at risk. Any order from the hearing would be temporary, not a final ruling.
On the federal side, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals set the briefing schedule in the challenge to the Medicare hemp coverage program, with opening briefs due October fifth and final briefs in mid-December. The case turns on whether the challengers have standing after a district judge dismissed it in May.
Around the states: Virginia hemp businesses asked the legislature's cannabis oversight commission for a hearing on the new two milligram total THC cap that took effect August fifteenth. In California, Governor Newsom signed Senate Bill nine seventeen, letting small winemakers sell and pour at certified farmers markets without the old estate-grown grape requirement, starting January first. And in Florida, Pensacola hemp sellers urged Congress to revisit the coming zero point four milligram federal drink limit before the November twelfth deadline.
On the radar: Canada's counter-tariffs, and Saskatchewan's fifty percent retail levy on U.S. alcohol, take effect September eighth. And the federal hemp redefinition arrives November twelfth unless the House approves the Senate-passed delay to December eleventh.
Full details and source links are in today's email. This update is for general information only — it is not legal advice.