A Cook County judge heard arguments Tuesday from a Chicago company that failed to win a permit to grow medical marijuana and then filed a lawsuit claiming the Illinois Department of Agriculture broke its own rules and is hiding behind a secretive process.
Judge Kathleen Kennedy is expected to issue a ruling Wednesday on a request for a temporary restraining order to halt the marijuana permit process in a region that covers Ford, Iroquois and Kankakee counties.
The plaintiff, PM Rx LLC, filed the complaint last week against the Department of Agriculture, claiming the agency didn't follow its own rules for licensing cultivation centers that will grow cannabis in the state's pilot program.
The company had applied for a license to grow marijuana in Kankakee. The state announced it was awarding the permit to another Chicago company, Cresco Labs LLC, which also won cultivation permits in two other districts. Cresco plans to build cultivation centers in Lincoln, Joliet and Kankakee.
Attorney John Rooks said his client, PM Rx, needs a delay in order to find out more about how the Illinois Department of Agriculture scored applicants.
National background checks through the FBI weren't completed before the permit winners were announced, Rooks said, citing statements from Gov. Bruce Rauner's administration and former Gov. Pat Quinn. There may be other problems, Rooks said, but the secrecy, spelled out in the state's medical cannabis law, makes it impossible to determine what those problems might be.
"Confidentiality is used as a sword to fend us off at every turn," Rooks said. "This seems to come down to just 'Trust us'. ... This is going to be secret forever and ever in the state of Illinois, how these licenses were determined."
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Alice Keane of the Illinois attorney general's office represented the agriculture department, telling the judge that similar lawsuits could be "a slippery slope," ultimately leading to the medical marijuana program grinding "to a halt."
Keane said PM Rx may have suffered "a level of disappointment" but hadn't shown irreparable harm from not winning the permit.
The agriculture department made its decisions based on signed statements from the applicants that they had no disqualifying criminal infractions on their records, Keane said. An Illinois State Police background check was completed, she added, and the permit winners will soon be notified of the FBI background check requirement. Keane told the judge that the state can revoke permits later if there are problems with the winning companies.
"There are no facts in the record that the department violated any rule or acts," Keane said.
