Federal immigration authorities improperly used federal drug laws to deny a visa to a software engineer at a prominent cannabis business-services provider, a judge ruled.
According to court records, Ameya Vinayak Pethe, an Indian national, sought an H-1B visa to work in the United States as the director of development operations for Treez, a software platform for state-legal cannabis businesses.
U.S Citizenship and Immigration Services – a Department of Homeland Security agency – approved Pethe’s visa in January 2022 but reversed course and denied him a visa after he sought permission to work in a different state.
In denying the visa request, authorities cited federal drug law and claimed that Pethe’s job at Treez would “aid and abet” violations of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), which considers marijuana highly addictive and of no medical value.
Treez, which is headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, filed a court challenge in U.S. District Court in Northern California in 2022.
In a Dec. 3 ruling first reported by Cannabis Business Times, Chief District Judge Richard Seeborg wrote that the government “ultimately … failed to support adequately their conclusion that Pethe’s performance of his job duties at Treez rises to the level of aiding and abetting any specific violation of the CSA.”
“While it may be true that Treez specifically targets marijuana dispensaries as its customers,” the judge wrote, “Pethe’s job responsibilities as a software engineer are too attenuated from any conduct by third parties that violates the CSA to warrant a conclusion that his employment comprises criminal aiding and abetting such that the amended (visa) petition could properly be denied.”
The company’s attorney, John Goldmark, said the ruling sends “a clear message that companies like Treez providing legitimate services to state-legal cannabis businesses deserve fair treatment and the government cannot unfairly target or discriminate against them simply because they serve the cannabis industry.”
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