Gaetan H. Bourgoin worked as a paper machine laborer for Fraser Papers. which was subsequently acquired by Twin Rivers, at a paper mill when he sustained a work-related back injury.

Bourgoin suffers from severe chronic pain syndrome. He consulted with a number of pain management specialists and attempted a variety of treatments, including opioid medications, for his pain. Due to adverse side effects of his continued use of opioids, and on the recommendation of his primary care physician, Bourgoin stopped using narcotic medications.

Bourgoin was then issued a certification to use medical marijuana. He successfully petitioned the Workers’ Compensation Board for an order requiring his former employer, Twin Rivers Paper Company, LLC, to pay for the medical marijuana.

Twin Rivers appealed to the Appellate Division, which affirmed the hearing officer’s decision in August of 2016. Twin Rivers Paper Company, LLC, and Sedgwick Claims Management Services appealed to the Maine Supreme Court..

The Maine Supreme Judicial Court was are called upon for the first time to consider the relationship between the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA) and the Maine Medical Use of Marijuana Act (MMUMA).

Twin Rivers argues that the Controlled Substances Act, 21 U.S.C.S. §§ 801-904, preempts application of the MMUMA as a predicate for an order that would compel Twin Rivers to reimburse Bourgoin for the use of medical marijuana.

The preemption analysis must begin with the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution, which “unambiguously provides that if there is any conflict between federal and state law, federal law shall prevail.”

Federal law can preempt state law in three ways: first, by express preemption, where Congress expressly states that federal law preempts the state law; second, by field preemption, where Congress explicitly or implicitly leaves “no room” for state law, or where federal law is “so dominant” that it “will be assumed to preclude enforcement” of the state law; and third, by conflict preemption, where the state law “actually conflicts with federal law.”

Congress has specified that the principles of conflict preemption are to be invoked to determine if state laws must yield to the CSA. Consequently, when framed in terms of the conflict preemption rubric, the dispositive question presented here is whether Twin Rivers is necessarily in violation of the CSA if it were to comply with the Board’s order to pay for the medical marijuana that Bourgoin is authorized to use pursuant to the MMUMA.

We conclude that in the narrow circumstances of this case – where an employer is subject to an order that would require it to subsidize an employee’s acquisition of medical marijuana – there is a positive conflict between federal and state law, and as a result, the CSA preempts the MMUMA as applied here. We therefore vacate the decision of the Appellate Division.