They Took His Weed. The Court Said They Couldn’t. Now His Own Tribe Won’t Give It Back.
A Minnesota appeals court just ruled the state had no jurisdiction to prosecute an Ojibwe man for cannabis on his own reservation. The decision draws on 40 years of sovereignty law. But the case’s most uncomfortable question isn’t about the state—it’s about the tribe.
On August 2, 2023—one day after recreational cannabis became legal in Minnesota—Mahnomen County sheriff’s deputies and White Earth tribal police raided the Asema Pipe & Tobacco Shop on the White Earth Reservation.
They seized 3,405 grams of cannabis flower, four ounces of dabs, over $3,000 in cash, a cell phone, and a surveillance system. They also entered the owner’s home, breaking a gun safe and door locks. The shop’s owner, Todd Jeremy Thompson, 56, an enrolled member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, was charged with first-degree cannabis possession—a felony carrying up to five years and a $10,000 fine.
Thompson owned Asema. It was licensed as a tobacco distributor under the White Earth Reservation Tax Code. He did not have a state cannabis license, and he did not have authorization from the tribal council to sell weed.
What he had was an understanding of the law: that as a tribal member on tribal land, in a state that had just legalized the substance in question, the state had no business charging him with anything.
It took two and a half years to prove him right. He lost at the district court level, then sought discretionary review from the Court of Appeals—which granted it and, on February 2, 2026, reversed the lower court and dismissed the charge. The state of Minnesota, the three-judge panel held, lacked jurisdiction.
Thompson is the first case to apply an entire doctrinal chain to cannabis that goes back almost 40 years.
What the Court Actually Said
The Court of Appeals opinion held that if up to two pounds of cannabis flower is legal in a private residence in Minnesota, it’s hard to argue that merely exceeding that amount constitutes the kind of serious threat to public safety that would justify restricting the analysis to the narrow conduct.
The court also found the charge to be clearly civil/regulatory. Minnesota’s 2023 cannabis law created an entire Office of Cannabis Management. It allows home growing. It allows gifting. It authorized tribal-state compacts for tribes to regulate cannabis independently. The legislature itself acknowledged the sovereign right of Minnesota Tribal governments to regulate the cannabis industry.
Thompson was charged with possession, not with possession with intent to sell. Those are separate crimes under separate statutes. The state’s belief that Thompson intended to sell the cannabis didn’t change the nature of the conduct actually charged.
That’s a detail that will matter in future cases, because it means the state’s own charging decision effectively conceded the regulatory character of the offense.
Wheelock’s Concurrence
Judge Sarah Wheelock agreed with the result but wrote separately.
Tribal sovereignty, she wrote, is inherent. It predates the Constitution. It predates contact. It has never been granted by federal or state governments—only recognized or, too often, overridden. She cited Cohen’s Handbook of Federal Indian Law, which opens its chapter on foundational principles by observing that hundreds of Indian tribes governed the entire land mass of the present-day United States before its creation.
Then she turned to the law. Wheelock argued that the majority’s holding should not be limited to the White Earth Band and the White Earth Reservation. The analysis turns on the nature of the state statute, not the identity of the tribe. The statute is either civil/regulatory or it isn’t. That determination doesn’t change depending on which reservation you’re standing on.
She also noted that the state’s own attorney conceded at oral argument that if Thompson had held some kind of license, his conduct would be civil/regulatory. Which means the state’s own framing of the problem was regulatory: licensed versus unlicensed, compliant versus noncompliant. Not criminal versus lawful.
Wheelock’s concurrence matters because it signals to the Minnesota Supreme Court—and to courts in other PL 280 states—that the analytical scaffolding, which goes back 40 years now, is ready for a broader application.
Where’s My Stash?
The appellate ruling came down on February 2, 2026. Mahnomen County did not seek further review, so the ruling is final.
But Thompson says he still doesn’t have his cannabis, his cash, or his equipment.
On February 4, he went to the Mahnomen County police station, filming on Facebook Live. An officer told him they didn’t have his property and that, as White Earth tribal police had initiated the raid, maybe White Earth police should be consulted about his stuff.
Thompson is now exploring a lawsuit.
He’s demanding his flower, his money, and an apology. He is also looking into the possibility of opening a dispensary—though, given that his shop has been shuttered for years and his business is destroyed, that path is anything but certain.
Who Does Sovereignty Protect?
Andy Jack Auginaush is a 36-year-old member of the White Earth Nation, a lifelong reservation resident, and a candidate for District 1 representative of the White Earth Reservation. He is pro-cannabis —and pro-Thompson.
Auginaush frames the conflict through Article 13 of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe’s revised constitution, titled “Rights of Members,” which guarantees band members “equal participation in our economic resources.” His argument is that if the tribal government operates cannabis dispensaries, individual band members have a constitutional right to participate in the same economy.
“Our tribal government right now monopolized the cannabis industry where they put cannabis codes in place that exclude members from joining,” Auginaush told me. “Despite Article 13—rights of members—equal participation in our economic resources.”
The tribe has also entered into compact agreements with the state, authorizing up to eight dispensaries and setting rules for how tribal cannabis businesses can operate beyond tribal lands.
Auginaush says band members were not consulted about these compacts and learned about them through local news.
When Thompson tried to raise these issues before the Tribal Executive Committee—the governing body of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, which comprises the chairman and secretary-treasurer from each of the six member reservations—Auginaush says he was silenced. According to Auginaush, Michael “Mike” LaRoque, the secretary-treasurer of White Earth and president of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, refused to allow Thompson to speak at open meetings.
There is also a deeper constitutional question that Auginaush has been pursuing. The Minnesota Chippewa Tribe’s constitution, under Article 12, requires a secretarial election—with at least 30 percent voter participation and approval by the Secretary of the Interior—to amend the constitution. The original constitution did not establish tribal courts or tribal law. Those institutions were created around 1980, when the TEC passed Interpretation 2-80, authorizing each reservation to create its own court system. Auginaush argues that because interpretations are not constitutional amendments, and no secretarial election was held, that process may not have satisfied Article 12.
Auginaush has filed formal requests with the TEC and certified letters to the Secretary of the Interior and the Solicitor’s Office seeking federal oversight. He says the TEC has ignored his requests. He considers his tribal remedies exhausted.
This is the part of the sovereignty story that doesn’t fit neatly into the conventional framing.
What This Changes
The Thompson decision is the first appellate ruling to apply the sovereignty framework to cannabis in a PL 280 state. It’s significant because it means that if a state legalizes cannabis and regulates it through a licensing framework, its possession statutes become civil/regulatory under PL 280—and unenforceable against enrolled tribal members on tribal land.
Public Law 280 applies in mandatory or optional form across multiple states, including Alaska, California, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oregon, Wisconsin, Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Washington. The Thompson precedent, while not binding outside Minnesota, provides a persuasive template for similar challenges elsewhere.
Judge Wheelock’s concurrence goes further, signaling that even within Minnesota, the holding should not necessarily be limited to White Earth. If the Minnesota Supreme Court eventually takes the case and adopts that view, the effect would be broader and immediate.
But the most important thing the ruling does is acknowledge that the analytical ground has shifted. The “narrow-conduct loophole” that allowed states to keep treating tribal activity as criminal—even when the broad conduct was regulated—is closing. That loophole sustained decades of prosecutions. If it closes permanently, a lot of cases that were filed, a lot of sentences that were served, and a lot of property that was seized will look very different in retrospect.
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