The Appellate Division issued a thorough opinion — and thorough rebuke — regarding the process by which the New Jersey Department of Health issued six licenses to grow, process and dispense marijuana as part of the State’s Medicinal Marijuana Program in In re Application for Med. Marijuana Alt. Treatment Ctr. for Pangaea Health & Wellness, LLC. In 2018, the Department of Health issued a request for proposal for six entities to operate medicinal marijuana operations. The Department of Health gathered a six-member panel that would assess the proposals on a scale of zero to 1,000. The Appellate Division held that “All roads lead to the same point: numerous, indisputable anomalies in the scoring of appellants’ applications prevent us from having sufficient confidence in the process adopted by the Department [of Health] or its results[.]” In a colorful 75-page opinion, the Court analogized the assessment of applications to umpires unable to distinguish a strike-out from a pop-out.
