The passage of Proposition 215 in California in 1996 brought national attention to the clash between seriously ill persons who need medical marijuana as part of their treatment and the federal government which, despite its own program which cultivates and distributes marijuana to a small group of patients, staunchly opposes the legal recognition of medical marijuana use. In response to the passage of Prop. 215, federal officials threatened California physicians with severe sanctions - including criminal prosecution and the loss of their federal licenses to prescribe controlled substances - if they recommended medical marijuana to their seriously ill patients, as permitted by the state law.

Within weeks of the federal threats against doctors, DPA Network, together with the American Civil Liberties Union and the civil rights law firm of Altshuler Berzon, filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of California's physicians and patients against the federal government. At the heart of the suit is the First Amendment rights for physicians to give and for patients to receive good faith medical judgments and opinions free from government coercion. The lawsuit has been victorious at all stages and has secured the rights of physicians and patients to discuss medical marijuana without government interference.

DPA Network, together with the prestigious law firm Bingham McCutchen LLP and criminal defense attorney Gerald Uelmen, filed a lawsuit  in Federal District Court in San Jose on behalf of the City and County of Santa Cruz, California and a class of ill and dying patients who use medical marijuana to relieve their pain.  This lawsuit, County of Santa Cruz, et al v John Ashcroft, et al, argues that the federal government's recent raid on a medical marijuana collective, the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana, was unjustified and actually violated patients' constitutional right to control the circumstances of their own suffering and death.  The lawsuit argued that local government has the right to care for its ill and dying patients. 

On August 28, 2003 Federal Judge Jeremy Fogel of San Jose's Federal District Court dismissed the lawsuit but allowed plaintiffs the opportunity to amend their claims.  In his decision Judge Fogel stated that while the federal district court "is acutely mindful of the suffering of the Patient-Plaintiffs and of the evidence that medicinal marijuana has helped to alleviate that suffering" that the present federal laws would not enable the plaintiffs to succeed in the case.

DPA Network has also been served as a friend-of-the-court in state and federal courts, compiling for the court the scientific evidence demonstrating the many important therapeutic benefits of marijuana.