What is the Texas Hemp Legal Defense Fund?:
The Texas Hemp Legal Defense Fund is a nonprofit organization incorporated under the laws of the State of Texas. THLDF is organized to raise funds for any legal actions useful to protect and promote the Texas hemp industry by challenging statutes, regulations, or other legal actions that endanger the economic health of the industry or the liberty of its participants. Legal actions may include challenges to unlawful exercises of government authority or government acts that violate the purpose of federal and state hemp legislation.
THLDF serves to provide cost efficient management for the legal defense of the hemp industry. Consequently, THLDF embraces transparency to its donors and the clients directly served by any legal efforts it funds.
What legal actions will THLDF fund?
THLDF will help challenge any laws or regulations that are damaging to the Texas hemp industry and legally unsound. THLDF’s initial focus will be on those provisions that are most damaging the economic success of hemp businesses.
On August 5, 2020, Crown Distributing LLC v. Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) was filed in Travis County District Court to challenge Texas’ ban on “smokable” hemp products both the statutory prohibition on processing and manufacturing consumable hemp products for smoking and the regulatory ban on manufacturing, processing, distribution, or retail sale of consumable hemp products for smoking. First and foremost, donations to THLDF will go toward paying the litigation costs of this effort to achieve economic liberty for Texans in the hemp industry.
Success so far:
THLDF supports the legal team that obtained a temporary injunction against the State of Texas to prevent the enforcement of the smokable hemp ban against the State on September 28, 2020. Trial on a permanent injunction was held in March. On August 3, 2021, the Austin court of appeals ruled that the distribution and retail sale ban was improper and upheld the temporary injunction but found that the injunction against the manufacturing and processing ban fails for technical reasons.
The legal team continues to fight back in the trial court and anticipates the case will once again work its way back up through the appellate courts after the trial court rules on the permanent injunction.