State argues DeWine’s hemp beer veto was legal

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(The Center Square) – Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine had the legal authority to veto parts of an appropriations bill that would have allowed beer companies to continue selling hemp beverages until the end of the year, the state argued in a filing with the state Supreme Court.

“The governor may veto any item in any bill making an appropriation of money,” the state said in its response to a lawsuit by brewers challenging DeWine’s veto. “For over a hundred years, everyone took the Constitution at its word: ‘any item’ truly meant ‘any item’ in an appropriations bill.”

The brewers are asking the Supreme Court to “find a hidden limitation in the Constitution’s text that apparently went unnoticed by generations of legislators, governors, and litigants,” the state said. “So, this is an easy case, or at least, it should be.”

A group of brewers sued the state, challenging DeWine’s “line item” veto of portions of Senate Bill 56 that would have given companies until Dec. 31 to transition out of the hemp beverage business and sell their inventories in response to new federal legislation on hemp products.

Even though Ohio voters in 2023 approved a measure legalizing the recreational use of marijuana, SB 56, passed late last year, placing new restrictions on the use and sale of hemp products.

The legislation, including DeWine’s line-item veto of the one-year transition period for brewers to sell their inventory, takes effect March 20.

“On that date, the manufacture and sale of hemp products like drinkable cannabinoid products will become illegal,” the state said in its brief to the Supreme Court.

The state criticized the brewers for waiting more than two months after the veto to file a legal challenge.

“Governor DeWine line-item vetoed S.B. 56 on December 19, 2025,” the state said. [Brewers] inexcusably waited seventy-seven days, until March 6, to seek ‘emergency’ relief. Under this Court’s briefing schedule, any decision will issue no earlier than March 17, just three days before S.B. 56’s March 20 effective date.”

In their lawsuit, the brewers said they face “potential criminal enforcement actions against them for possessing millions of dollars’ worth of inventory that they bought

in good faith before the governor’s veto.

In addition, the veto will force them to “collectively, to lay off dozens of employees and will cost them millions of dollars in investments and lost sales,” their suit said.