People in San Marcos could soon get cited or arrested for marijuana possession again.
An appeals court sided with Attorney General Ken Paxton on whether the city's marijuana decriminalization ordinance is legal in an opinion released last week.
The ordinance, which was overwhelmingly approved in 2022, blocked police from issuing citations to people possessing four ounces or less of marijuana, except under limited circumstances.
After the ordinance passed, marijuana arrests completely stopped in San Marcos through the beginning of 2023, according to data from the San Marcos Police Department. Data from mid-2023 to the present was not immediately available.
The opinion said the ordinance isn't legal because it conflicts with a 1997 state law that prohibits cities from adopting policies that don't allow local police to fully enforce state drug laws.
The decision means Paxton's lawsuit, which had previously been dismissed by a Hays County judge, will now go to trial. San Marcos police are not allowed to continue following the marijuana decriminalization ordinance in the meantime, city officials said.
Similar marijuana decriminalization ordinances are active in Austin, Elgin, Denton and Killeen. Paxton has also sued those cities.
The opinion came from the 15th Court of Appeals, which lawmakers created in 2023 to oversee appeals involving the state. Three of the five justices in the court are conservatives appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott, according to reporting from The Texas Tribune.
Eric Martinez, executive director of advocacy group Mano Amiga, called the move "judicial gerrymandering."
"Let's be clear—this decision didn't come from a court grounded in community," he said in a statement. "It came from a court manufactured by the same state officials bringing the lawsuit, with the express goal of silencing progressive policies that Texans are voting for at the local level."
Catina Voellinger, executive director of Ground Game Texas, the group that helped get marijuana decriminalization on the ballot in San Marcos, said the appeals court's opinion was a "playbook as old as Jim Crow."
"Texans have made their voices heard at the ballot box again and again: they don't want their money going towards unnecessary arrests," Voellinger said in a statement. "This ruling is proof that the state isn't working to make communities safer—it's working to crush people-powered movements."
Maya Fawaz contributed to this report.
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