Code enforcers normally punish homeowners for their own mistakes. But the rules work differently in Humboldt County, California. Newcomers Corrine and Doug Thomas learned the hard way in August 2021.
About one week after the couple moved from Los Angeles County to a new home in the heart of the Redwood Forest, they found a violation notice on their front gate accusing them of growing commercial cannabis without a permit.
Talk about a welcoming committee! Instead of a plate of brownies — the kind not laced with pot — the Thomases received threats of $16,000 in fines per day for having a three-story barn on their property. The previous owners had built the structure without a permit and then used it for an unauthorized cannabis business, but the Thomases had nothing to do with that.
They bought the property with a clean title showing no outstanding violations or liens, and they had no plans to use the barn for anything illegal. They have never grown, harvested or sold marijuana, nor do they use it themselves.
Their only enterprise is a foundation that supports families with autistic children. The nonprofit organization builds on Corrine’s book and a movie adaptation, “Miracle Run,” about her autistic twins. Otherwise, the Thomases are retired on a fixed income.
Money for their relocation came from an insurance settlement following the Woolsey Fire, which destroyed their previous home. Despite their limited resources, the county gave them an ultimatum: Demolish the barn within 10 days or face financial ruin.
Even if the Thomases had cash for the project — an engineer estimated it would cost about $200,000 to tear down the barn and surrounding old-growth trees — the timeframe was impossible. All they could do was watch as the fines swelled above $1 million.
“The way this was looking is that we were going to lose everything,” Doug says.
Many Humboldt County families can relate. As soon as California voters legalized recreational marijuana in 2016, the local Planning and Building Department began making plans to maximize the county’s share of marijuana proceeds. By the time the law took effect in 2018, the zoning police were ready.
Their business model is simple: They charge a premium for cannabis land use and turbocharge penalties for anything that might be evasion.
Using crude satellite imagery, they identify anything that looks like a greenhouse, outbuilding, graded plot, access road or pond installed without a permit. Based on little more than the region’s reputation as the Emerald Triangle — the nation’s largest cannabis cultivation source — the zoning police declare all of these improvements as proof of illegal cannabis agriculture.
No search warrant, site visit or follow-up is needed. Guilt is assumed, and property owners who try to defend themselves have no reasonable recourse. Families wait years for their day in court, only to find themselves pleading their cases before a private attorney on the county’s payroll — not a real judge.
County resident Rhonda Olson got hit with more than $7 million in fines after buying three adjacent parcels of land, which never contained cannabis under her ownership. Blu Graham faced $900,000 in fines based on uninvestigated allegations that he was growing marijuana in greenhouses on his land. In reality, he was growing vegetables for his family-owned restaurant.
Rather than accept the civil rights violations, these property owners fought back with a class-action lawsuit in federal court on Oct. 5, 2022. Our public interest law firm, the Institute for Justice, represents them.
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The case hinges on basic promises of justice. Cannabis is a cash crop, and the government wants its cut. But code enforcers cannot circumvent the Constitution to maximize revenue.
Property owners have a right to the presumption of innocence and due process. The government cannot merely pick victims and demand payment without proof of wrongdoing. Even if property owners are guilty, the penalties must match the offense. Fining people hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars for something like building a greenhouse without a permit is grossly disproportionate to the violation.
Humboldt County ignores these principles in its hunt for cash, forcing many families to settle out of court for imaginary offenses—or someone else’s real offenses. Often, pressuring people into settlements is the county’s goal.
The Thomases have a simpler goal: They just want to live in peace.
Jared McClain is an attorney and Daryl James is a writer at the Institute for Justice in Arlington, Virginia.