The Detroit Equity Ordinance Fight

Last verified: April 2026

The Defining Detroit Story

If one story defines Detroit cannabis policy, this is it. Detroit was the largest American city to attempt an aggressive, residency-anchored equity program for adult-use licensing — and the largest American city to have a federal court strike that program down before a single license was issued.

Timeline of a Slow Rollout

The 2020 Ordinance — Detroit Legacy

On November 24, 2020, the Detroit City Council unanimously approved the first adult-use ordinance, sponsored by then-Council Member James Tate. The ordinance:

• Authorized up to 75 adult-use retail licenses
• Reserved at least half for “Detroit Legacy” applicants
• Defined Legacy as: 15 years of Detroit residency in the prior 30, OR 10 years residency plus a parental cannabis conviction predating the applicant’s 18th birthday
• Provided land discounts, reduced fees, and tiered application priority
• Included a poison-pill clause: if struck down, the ordinance would automatically repeal itself and prohibit all adult-use establishments in Detroit

Crystal Lowe v. City of Detroit — The Federal Lawsuit

Crystal Lowe was a Detroit-area cannabis industry worker who had lived in Detroit for ten of the prior thirty years — short of the 15-year threshold the ordinance required for full Legacy status. Her mother had a cannabis conviction, but it occurred when Crystal was 19, not before her 18th birthday as the ordinance required. Represented by Kevin Blair of Honigman LLP, Lowe filed suit in Wayne County Circuit Court on March 2, 2021. The City removed it to the Eastern District of Michigan; the case was assigned to Judge Bernard A. Friedman, a Reagan appointee with a long civil-rights docket.

Friedman’s June 2021 Ruling

Friedman’s June 17, 2021 opinion did not pull punches. The ordinance’s “favoritism” toward long-term residents, he wrote, was “far more protectionist than it is equitable” and “likely unconstitutional” under both the Dormant Commerce Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment. The court found Detroit had failed to articulate why a 15-year residency requirement (or 10-year residency plus a parental cannabis conviction predating the applicant’s 18th birthday) was narrowly tailored to remedy the documented harms of cannabis prohibition.

The poison-pill clause — if struck down, the ordinance would automatically repeal itself — was a clause Blair told Grown In he believed was inserted because city leaders “knew this was unconstitutional.”

The Broader DCC Wave

The ruling fits inside a broader, accelerating wave of Dormant Commerce Clause cannabis litigation. In 2022 and 2025, the First and Second Circuits respectively held that state cannabis residency requirements violate the Dormant Commerce Clause — affirming the rationale Friedman applied to Detroit. In January 2026, the Ninth Circuit went the other way in Peridot Tree WA, Inc. v. Washington State Liquor & Cannabis Control Board, creating a circuit split that may force the Supreme Court’s hand. See DCC Circuit Split.

The 2022 Revised Ordinance

Tate’s revised ordinance, sponsored with Mayor Mike Duggan’s backing and approved 8-1 in April 2022, made three structural changes:

1. Two separate tracks. Equity and non-equity applicants no longer compete head-to-head. Each round reserves an equal number of licenses for each track.
2. State-defined equity, not Detroit-only residency. “Equity applicant” tracks Michigan’s MRTMA social-equity definition: a person whose primary residence is in any community that has been disproportionately impacted by marijuana enforcement (at least 20% poverty rate and a marijuana conviction rate above the state median of 660). A 51%-owned business by such a person also qualifies.
3. “Legacy Detroiter” demoted from gatekeeper to support category. Living in Detroit 10 of the last 30 years still qualifies a person as a Legacy Detroiter, but only for mentoring, financing assistance, city-property purchase opportunities, and the city’s Detroit Cannabis Project incubator — not for license eligibility itself.

Mayor Duggan’s Constitutional Concession

Mayor Mike Duggan (D, in office January 2014 through January 2026) shepherded both ordinances and publicly supported the equity-first vision while pragmatically accepting Friedman’s ruling. “Our goal from the day voters approved the sale of adult use marijuana was to make sure we had a city ordinance and a process in place that provides fair and equitable access to these licenses, and the courts have affirmed that we’ve done just that,” Duggan said when the first 33 licenses were awarded in December 2022. James Tate (Council District 1, elected Council President January 2025) remains the political face of the program; Tate noted in 2022 that during the prohibition era “Detroiters were 30 times more likely to be convicted of a marijuana crime than elsewhere in Michigan.”

The Outcome

The equity ordinance is, in the most precise legal sense, the city that fought to protect equity and lost in court — and then rebuilt a constitutionally narrower version that has put more Black-owned cannabis businesses on the ground than any other major American city’s equity program. See Equity Outcomes.

Related on this site: Detroit Office of Cannabis Affairs &a..., The 2022 Revised Ordinance.