Emerge obtained a significant win for their client and owner of the Juniper Preserve Resort near Bend, Oregon, seeking to locate a psilocybin service center at their wellness-focused resort.
On February 21, 2025, the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals (LUBA) issued its decision in Juniper Institute LLC v. Deschutes County LUBA No. 2024-077 reversing Deschutes County’s denial of a psilocybin service center land use permit and ordering the County to approve the permit. Emerge client and owner of the Juniper Preserve Resort near Bend, Oregon, sought a conditional use permit from the County to locate a psilocybin service center at the resort. To our knowledge, this would constitute the first service center in Oregon located on the grounds of an existing destination resort.
The County twice denied the application based on the “lack of adequate transportation access” to the proposed site for the service center use. According to the County, Juniper lacked adequate access to the site because access depended upon travelling over federal land managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) via an access road governed by a BLM-granted right-of-way agreement (the “BLM Grant”). Because federal law prohibits psilocybin possession “on federal land,” the County argued that Juniper could not legally transport psilocybin to the site and, therefore, lacked adequate access to the site for the purpose of operating a psilocybin service center, generally, and could not access the site under the terms of the BLM Grant.
Emerge attorneys Alex Berger and Corinne Celko filed an appeal at LUBA on behalf of petitioner Juniper arguing, among other things, that federal prohibition against psilocybin applies everywhere, not just on federal land, and so, under the County’s reasoning, no psilocybin applicant could ever show “adequate access” for any site in the County. This, they argued, would negate the County’s zoning code allowing psilocybin uses in certain zones, and effectively nullify the Oregon Psilocybin Services Act (the “Act”), legalizing regulated psilocybin in the state, despite its federal illegality. This, Berger and Celko argued, clearly constituted an unreasonable application of local time, place, manner restrictions contrary to Oregon law. They further argued that the County lacked the legal authority to interpret the terms of the BLM Grant based on caselaw establishing that a local governing body is not the appropriate decisionmaker to resolve the terms of a private agreement, such as easement.
LUBA agreed with petitioner and sustained in whole or in part three out of four of Juniper’s assignments of error (LUBA determined that it need not reach the third assignment). Notably, LUBA also opined that the County misinterpreted the term “access” to include the transportation of a particular object (here, psilocybin), as opposed to legal and physical access for vehicles and pedestrians.
On the strength of petitioner’s arguments, LUBA opted to reverse the denial and order the County to approve the application rather than remand it back to the County for further proceedings, which means that, barring an appeal to the Oregon Court of Appeals, the County must approve the application allowing Juniper to move forward with development of the service center. This represents a win for the expansion of psilocybin services outside of the traditional urban settings to the more rural, nature-based areas of the state.
