Rhode Island is redoing its cannabis license lottery — this time without the rule that got it sued

Rhode Island's Cannabis Control Commission reopened retail license applications on August 10, open through November 23, restarting a process a federal judge froze back in May. The original round required license applicants to be majority-owned by Rhode Island residents; a California cannabis entrepreneur sued in 2024 arguing that violated the Constitution's dormant Commerce Clause, and U.S. District Judge Melissa DuBose blocked the commission from running its planned lottery or finishing its review of the 97 applications already submitted.

Rather than litigate it out, Rhode Island lawmakers scrapped the residency requirement outright — Gov. Dan McKee signed the fix in June. Anyone who applied under the old rules and paid the $7,500 fee is entitled to a refund and has to reapply from scratch under the new criteria.

The new round covers 24 retail licenses: six reserved for social equity applicants, who face an earlier September 11 certification deadline, and six for worker-owned cooperatives. Rhode Island currently runs on nine dispensaries, all grandfathered in from the medical program, so this round roughly triples the state's retail footprint if it closes out cleanly this time.

For operators outside the state, the residency repeal is the headline: multistate operators locked out of the first round can now compete for licenses on equal footing, which changes the math for anyone who wrote Rhode Island off in 2024. For applicants from the first round, refunds are supposedly already processing — worth confirming directly with the commission rather than assuming it happened automatically.