SALT LAKE CITY — A lawsuit seeking to keep Proposition 2 off the November ballot has been amended, dropping references to medical marijuana offending members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
FOX 13 reported on the lawsuit filed by Walter Plumb III, a leading opponent of the medical marijuana ballot initiative. In the original lawsuit, he declared that faithful LDS members may find medical cannabis “repugnant.”
The change came hours after the LDS Church announced it did not oppose medical cannabis itself (when prescribed by a doctor and distributed through a pharmacy), but was going to actively oppose Prop. 2.
When asked by FOX 13 about Plumb’s lawsuit, Elder Jack Gerard of the LDS Church’s Quorum of the Seventy replied: “the Church is not part of that lawsuit.”
Now, the lawsuit focuses on the rights of property owners whom it claims would not be allowed to deny housing to medical cannabis users. Plumb also dropped Drug Safe Utah from the lawsuit after it claimed it was not involved. Now, his new group is a plaintiff: “Truth About Prop. 2.”
The Utah Patients Coalition, which is sponsoring Prop. 2, was pleased the lawsuit had been changed.
“We are grateful that the more bizarre and inflammatory aspects of Drug Safe Utah’s lawsuit were dropped. Calling medical patients repugnant, regardless of your position on Prop 2, shouldn’t have a place in Utah politics,” DJ Schanz said in a statement to FOX 13. “Now, if this group will just drop the rest of this frivolous lawsuit, the voters of Utah may finally have a say on this important issue.”
A judge has yet to schedule a hearing in the case on whether to keep Prop. 2 off the ballot. Those ballots will be printed next week.
Read the lawsuit here (refresh the page if it doesn’t immediately load):
