A small business vs. the entire State House
This is what it looks like when the rules change after the game is over.
We applied in Cranston, where we were both born and raised. We did everything the state's rules required — Social Equity certification, full zoning approval, building and electrical permits, a complete application by the deadline, and more than $500,000 of our own capital. Ours was the only Social Equity application in our zone to finish on time. After the Commission's own 90-day review, we won — fair and square.
The Social Equity applicant on this license is a lifelong Cranston resident who spent her career helping people recover from addiction. She lived in one of the neighborhoods the war on drugs hit hardest and qualified for the Social Equity program — she is exactly who it was written for. The other partner is a lifelong Rhode Islander too, an investor and CFO who has spent a career in some of the most heavily regulated industries there are. Together, they were the kind of team this state says it wants.
Then a federal court flagged one piece of the law — the requirement that owners be Rhode Island residents. This was never the fault of the people who sued, or the court. It was the State — which wrote a rule it should have known was vulnerable, defended it for years, and is still appealing it today. Instead of fixing that one provision, the General Assembly used it as the reason to tear down the whole process and order the Cannabis Control Commission to start over from zero.
That bill is H8544. The House passed it 63–1, the Senate 29–8, and on June 10, 2026, Governor Dan McKee signed it into law. The moment he did, the application we'd already won was worth nothing — and under the new criteria, she no longer even qualifies to apply. The program built to lift her up now locks her out.
This is what a broken business climate looks like. This year Rhode Island was ranked 46th for business by CNBC and dead last — the worst state in America to start a business — by WalletHub. When a state can erase its own rules after people bet everything on them, capital stops coming.
We're fighting back. Before they passed the provision that tries to bar us from suing, we sued — and we'll keep fighting, in the courts and in the open, until this is fixed the right way. ▶ Watch David Rozen tell the whole story (5 min).