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Nebraska’s AG asked lawmaker to stop transfer of legislation to regulate hemp industry

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January 27, 2025

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Attorney General Mike Hilgers (right) talks next to Gov. Jim Pillen in the Governor’s Hearing Room on Jan. 13 at the Capitol.

JUSTIN WAN, Journal Star

After an Omaha lawmaker’s proposed law to regulate the consumable hemp-derived products available on store shelves across Nebraska was sent to the Legislature’s Judiciary Committee, Sen. John Cavanaugh last week sought a different venue for the bill.

His legislation (LB16) would place the state’s first regulations on the THC products lawmakers inadvertently legalized in 2019 when they passed the Hemp Farming Act that paved the way for high-inducing edible and smokable hemp-derived products to be sold across the state.

Cavanaugh thought his bill should be heard by the Legislature’s General Affairs Committee, which has jurisdiction over bills that deal with the regulation of alcohol, gambling and medicinal cannabis — authority that, Cavanaugh argued, should extend to hemp.

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Sen. John Cavanaugh of Omaha lobbied last week to have his bill to regulate hemp heard by the Legislature’s General Affairs Committee, but failed to convince the Executive Board after Attorney General Mike Hilgers asked another senator to oppose the move.

MEGAN NIELSEN, OMAHA WORLD-HERALD

But as Cavanaugh worked to get his bill moved to the committee last week, Attorney General Mike Hilgers, an outspoken critic of Nebraska’s THC industry, called at least one other lawmaker to run interference.

Hilgers’ move comes as the Legislature and Executive Branch remain at odds over their separation of powers after the attorney general issued opinions in recent years that led the state to violate laws restoring felon voting rights and providing legislative oversight over executive branch agencies.

Cavanaugh penned a letter dated Jan. 13 to the legislative committee tasked with referencing bills to other committees and asked that his bill be moved to General Affairs.

Two key lawmakers co-signed his request: Sens. Carolyn Bosn of Lincoln and Rick Holdcroft of Bellevue, the chairs of the Judiciary and General Affairs committees.

But before the Legislature’s Executive Board considered the joint request at a meeting Jan. 17, Bosn and Holdcroft had both changed their minds, penning separate letters to the Executive Board’s chairman announcing their reversals.

The near-identical letters asking Sen. Ben Hansen and the rest of the Executive Board to keep LB16 in the Judiciary Committee are both dated Jan. 16.

Cavanaugh said he didn’t receive a copy of either letter until he showed up at the next day’s hearing to advocate for his bill to be re-referenced to General Affairs, a committee he is a member of.

In his remarks to the committee last week, Cavanaugh offered a theory for why his colleagues had reversed their positions: Hilgers is backing a separate bill (LB316) seeking to outlaw the same consumable hemp-derived THC products Cavanaugh is seeking to regulate.

“I have heard that the attorney general is interested in making sure that both of these bills go … to Judiciary because the attorney general would like that bill to pass and ban this substance,” he said. “However, I don’t think we historically have put bills in a different committee because someone else has a different aspiration.”

Holdcroft

Holdcroft, the General Affairs chairman, confirmed as much Friday to the Journal Star.

After first indicating he did not speak to Hilgers prior to sending his Jan. 16 reversal letter to Hansen, Holdcroft said Hilgers had called him and urged him to support keeping Cavanaugh’s bill in the Judiciary Committee.

Bosn, meanwhile, said she had received no such call. She said she had only spoken with Hilgers about Cavanaugh’s bill when her and Cavanaugh did so together and that Hansen, the executive board chairman, is the person who told her “it doesn’t make sense to have (the bills) in two different committees.”

Bosn

Courtesy photo

A spokeswoman for Hilgers acknowledged he had talked with lawmakers about the fate of LB16 and said the attorney general “is grateful that senators are willing to hear from those outside the body on matters of public policy and matters of public concern, including whether bills addressing the same subject matter should be heard in the same committee.

“Of course, just like any other issue before the body, the decision and vote rests with the senators themselves,” the spokeswoman said in a statement. Hilgers served as a speaker of the Legislature before becoming attorney general in 2023.

The reversals from Bosn and Holdcroft — and the bid to place Cavanaugh’s regulatory bill in a committee focused on criminal law — caused confusion among some members of the Executive Board.

“We’ve just gotten letters from them that are, within a couple days, opposites,” Lincoln Sen. Eliot Bostar said. “So it’s interesting that very quickly we got self-conflicting positions.”

Sen. Rob Clements of Elmwood pointed out that Cavanaugh’s bill uses the word “commission” 201 times.

“None of them say commission of a crime. It’s ‘The commission shall hold a hearing. The commission shall issue a license,'” Clements said, adding: “It is looking regulatory, as I see it.”

But Hansen and Sen. Teresa Ibach of Sumner argued against removing the bill from the docket of the Judiciary Committee, which Ibach argued “needs to define” consumable hemp products before lawmakers can regulate them.

“Until we know what we’re regulating, we can’t regulate it,” she said.

The law that legalized hemp in Nebraska in 2019 already outlined what hemp products are legal, requiring the products contain no more than 0.3% of Delta-9 THC, but placed no limits on the hundreds of other cannabinoids present in hemp, including Delta 8, paving the products to be sold in stores across the state.

But Hilgers has long maintained that Delta 8 and other THC variants are illegal in Nebraska — even as he asks lawmakers, for the second year in a row, to outlaw the substances in the state.

“Some people maybe don’t like the current definition under federal statute and state statute, but there is a definition,” Cavanaugh said. “And LB16 seeks to regulate it.”

In a party-line vote Thursday, the Executive Board rejected Cavanaugh’s bid to move his bill to the General Affairs Committee by an 8-3 margin.

The bill is scheduled for a public hearing before the Legislature’s Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.

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Photos: Day 1 of the Nebraska Legislature’s 2025 session

Nine-year-old Everett Prokop (left) sits in the chair of his father, Sen. Jason Prokop of Lincoln (front right), as he shows family members his desk on the floor of the Legislature on first day of the legislative session Wednesday at the Capitol.