Legal challenges to efforts by the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission to award licenses to businesses to start the state’s new industry continued at a court hearing Monday afternoon.

Lawyers representing some companies that applied for licenses are asking Montgomery County Circuit Judge James Anderson to block the use of scores that evaluators used to help rank applicants.

At the end of the hearing, Anderson said he would deny the companies’ request for a temporary restraining order and would allow the AMCC to move ahead with a new timeline that includes a goal of issuing licenses in January.

That could make medical marijuana products available by the spring, officials have said.

But the litigation also proceeds, including the request by Specialty Medical Products of Alabama for a preliminary injunction and a declaration that the AMCC’s scoring system is invalid.

Anderson said he would allow the AMCC to file a response to Specialty Medical Products before ruling on the company’s requests.

“The court’s intent is to resolve this and protect everybody’s rights,” Anderson said.

Specialty Medical Products is based in Baldwin County and applied for an integrated license to cultivate, process, transport, and dispense medical cannabis. The AMCC can issue a maximum of five integrated licenses.

The AMCC did not pick Specialty Medical Products when it awarded licenses in June and in August. The AMCC has rescinded both of those rounds of license awards because of mistakes with the scoring and the litigation. The AMCC adopted new rules and procedures to try for a third time to issue licenses.

That means that all 90 companies that applied for licenses as cultivators, processors, transporters, dispensers, and testing labs still have a chance to make their case with presentations in late November and early December.

But some applicants say the new rules do not fix all the flaws in the process, including the scoring system. Lawyers for Specialty Medical Products and for Alabama Always, a Montgomery-based company, called witnesses during Monday’s hearing to try to establish what they said were inconsistencies and flaws in the scoring system.

Ray French, CEO and part owner of Specialty Medical Products, testified that two evaluators inexplicably gave the company far different scores in some categories.

“They’re using criteria that we don’t know,” Wallace Mills, the attorney for Specialty Medical Products, told the judge. “They haven’t told us.”

Greg Gerdeman, a biologist who is the chief scientific officer for Alabama Always, testified that the scores were subjective and lacked measurable standards. Alabama Always officials said they have spent $7 million building their facility to grow and process medical cannabis in west Montgomery. They say the scoring system fails to take into account a mandate in the law that companies be ready to start growing cannabis within 60 days of receiving a license.

Alabama Always’ score ranked 26th out of the 38 applicants for an integrated license, while Specialty Medical Products ranked 33rd.

Mark Wilkerson, an attorney for the AMCC, told the judge that the scores are not binding and that the commissioners have discretion to make their licensing decisions independently of the scores. That is a point AMCC lawyers and officials have made asserted repeatedly.

Specialty Medical Products claims that the scoring system is invalid because it should have been adopted as a rule under the Alabama Administrative Procedures Act, which would allow for publication and a public comment period before taking effect. He said it should be treated like the rules that govern licenses for doctors, nurses, chiropractors, and other professions, so that applicants know what is required.

A total of about 25 companies are involved in litigation with the AMCC. Anderson consolidated most of the lawsuits.

The Legislature approved medical marijuana in 2021 and created the AMCC to oversee the seed-to-sale regulation of what will be a fully intrastate industry.

Products can include gummies, tablets, capsules, tinctures, patches, oils, and other forms allowed by the legislation.

Patients who receive a medical cannabis card from a doctor will be able to buy the products at licensed dispensaries.

The products can be used to treat a wide range of conditions, including chronic pain, weight loss and nausea from cancer, depression, panic disorder, epilepsy, muscle spasms caused by disease or spinal cord injuries, PTSD, and others.