Green Room, et al. v. State of Wyoming, et al.
Split Score
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Case Summary
Disposition
Affirmed
Hemp businesses challenged Wyoming’s 2024 statute (SEA 24) that restricts hemp products, asserting federal pre-emption, Dormant Commerce Clause, regulatory-takings, and vagueness claims and seeking injunctive relief. The Tenth Circuit affirmed dismissal, holding the 2018 Farm Bill confers no privately enforceable right, the statute does not violate the Dormant Commerce Clause or constitute a taking, and its terms are not unconstitutionally vague; the preliminary-injunction appeal was dismissed as moot.
Circuit Split Identified
Legal Issue
Whether a private party may obtain prospective equitable relief (injunction/declaratory judgment) against state officials on Supremacy-Clause-based pre-emption grounds when the underlying federal statute does not confer an individual substantive right—i.e., is there a freestanding ‘equitable cause of action’ recognized under Armstrong v. Exceptional Child Center?
Circuit Positions
Equitable cause of action exists—plaintiffs may invoke federal equity to enjoin state laws pre-empted by federal law even without a substantive private right; Armstrong preserves this remedy.
No freestanding equitable cause of action—plaintiff must show a substantive federal right; Armstrong does not create independent equity jurisdiction.
Conflict Summary
The Tenth Circuit, bound by Safe Streets Alliance v. Hickenlooper, holds that a plaintiff must point to an unambiguously conferred federal right (usually via §1983) before it can seek injunctive or declaratory relief for alleged federal pre-emption. Most other circuits read Armstrong to permit traditional equitable actions to restrain pre-empted state laws even when the federal statute creates no private right, so long as Congress has not expressly or impliedly foreclosed such relief.