This case raises the question whether New Mexico courts should retire their current, federal-centric approach to interpreting the New Mexico Constitution—a method known as the “interstitial approach”—and embrace an independent approach that would allow them to more readily diverge from federal courts in light of New Mexico’s own law, history, and values. The Court’s decision could have major implications for New Mexicans’ ability to vindicate their state constitutional rights.

The Seventh Amendment gives people a constitutional right to a jury trial in civil cases seeking money damages. The Supreme Court held that incarcerated plaintiffs have a right to a jury trial on questions of administrative exhaustion under the Prison Litigation Reform Act, when the facts underlying exhaustion would also decide the merits of their case.

This case presents two questions: first, whether, under the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and Article I, section 7 of the Tennessee Constitution, Union City Police Department officers possessed probable cause to conduct a warrantless search of the defendant’s vehicle based exclusively on the alleged odor of cannabis, and second, whether the Court of Appeals had jurisdiction to overturn the defendant’s conviction. The ACLU’s Criminal Reform Legal Project and State Supreme Court Initiative, along with the ACLU of Tennessee filed an amicus brief arguing first, that after Tennessee’s legalization of hemp in 2019, an officer’s alleged detection of the odor of cannabis is insufficient to establish probable cause to conduct a warrantless search of a vehicle in Tennessee, and second, that the court of appeals improperly held that it lacked jurisdiction to overturn the defendant’s conviction.