Weed Spilled In Your Car Doesn't Violate Open Container Laws, California Court Rules

You shouldn't drink and drive. Even with all the available ride share services these days, drunk driving contributes to a major percentage of fatal crashes in some of America's deadliest driving states. You shouldn't drive while you're high, either — just because weed is legal in some places doesn't mean it's a good idea to drive high. But since marijuana has become legal at the state level in several states,  it's worth asking questions like, "What counts as an open container of marijuana?" According to the California Supreme Court, it's not little bits of weed spilled on the floor of your car, the LA Times reports.

That decision came after a Sacramento police officer pulled a driver over for allegedly failing to come to a complete stop and noticed a couple of weed "crumbs" on the floor in the rear of the car. The officer then used violation of California's open container law as a pretext to claim they had probable cause to search the rest of the car. That search turned up an unregistered handgun, which the passenger was then charged with possessing. 

Eventually, that case worked its way up to the California Supreme Court, which ruled on January 29th that the driver had not actually violated the state's open container law by failing to properly vacuum up the small number of weed crumbs that had fallen onto the floor in the back seat. "The question before us is whether a small amount of loose marijuana scattered on the rear floor of a car violates [the open container] provision," Justice Goodwin Liu wrote in the court's decision. "We hold it does not."

Liu went on to explain the court's decision further, writing: 

No officer suggested he was concerned that [the driver or passenger] could have somehow, while riding in the front of the car, collected the scattered bits of marijuana from the rear floor behind [the passenger] for imminent consumption. The officers had no reason to believe that any marijuana was recently rolled, and the officers did not suspect impaired driving, underscoring the disconnect between the scattered bits of loose marijuana on the rear floor and potential for imminent consumption.

He also added that the state's open container law has "been relevant primarily in the context of alcohol," and that, while the court believed "the 'open container' concept as applied to marijuana reflects the same purpose, alcohol and marijuana are materially different." Essentially, the justices' argument boils down to the fact that a driver could plausibly reach into the back seat to take a swig from an open bottle of vodka at a stoplight; it's much less plausible that someone would be reaching back to pick up some crumbs off the floor that they'd then smoke. As Liu put it:

Marijuana that is not in a state to be consumed or that cannot be reached 'while driving, operating, or riding' in a vehicle has no potential for impaired driving...While marijuana in a sealed container is neither readily accessible nor imminently usable and thus does not violate the open container statute, marijuana in a vehicle need not be in a sealed container to be lawful.

So there you go. If there's any weed stuck in your floor mats, you should probably stop wasting money like that, but it's not an open container violation in California. And, according to The Supreme Court of California, the cops can no longer (legally, anyway) claim it gives them probable cause to search your car.