If you use cannabis on your own time in a state where it is legal, should that be grounds for terminating your employment or rejecting your application for a job? Advocates are starting to say no, and demanding action to protest workers\u2019 rights to use cannabis without the fear of the sack and unemployment.<\/p>\n
Some states have already made progress in this direction. Yet California, which led the way toward opening legal space for cannabis with the Propositio 215 medical marijuana initiative in 1996, is not among them. Neither 215 nor the Prop 64 adult-use legalization initiative exactly 20 years later provided any such protections.<\/p>\n
California\u2019s Supreme Court actually\u00a0ruled on the question<\/a>\u00a0in 2008, finding that Prop 215 does not protect workers\u2019 rights. The high court dismissed a suit brought by Gary Ross, an Air Force veteran who suffered from a back injury sustained during his military service. Ross sued under the state\u2019s Fair Employment & Housing Act (FEHA), charging that he had been wrongfully denied employment by\u00a0RagingWire Telecommunications\u00a0after testing positive for cannabis use. The court found that 215 did not create a general right to use medical marijuana, but only protected patients from criminal prosecution.<\/p>\n Later that year, the State Legislature passed a law to correct this situation, making it illegal for employers to discriminate against workers in non-safety-sensitive jobs for using medical marijuana. However,\u00a0it was vetoed<\/a>\u00a0by then-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.<\/p>\n The California chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) has\u00a0launched a campaign<\/a>\u00a0to instate employment protections for cannabis users.<\/p>\n Fortunately, things are looking a little better elsewhere in the United States. Fifteen states\u00a0have passed laws<\/a>\u00a0making it illegal for an employer to discriminate against either an employee or job applicant who uses medical marijuana as permitted by state law. These states are Arkansas, Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and West Virginia.<\/p>\n In June, Nevada\u00a0became the first state<\/a>\u00a0to actually ban pre-employment cannabis testing altogether \u2014 for workers not in public safety positions, an inevitable exception. The law was signed by Gov. Steve Sisolak and will take effect next year.\u00a0<\/p>\n In Maine, which voted to legalize adult-use cannabis in the same 2016 elections that California and Nevada did, employers\u00a0are not allowed to discriminate<\/a>\u00a0based on cannabis use. This was written into the text of the Pine Tree State\u2019s 2002 medical marijuana law. However, there are no laws that directly address drug testing.\u00a0<\/p>\n The New York City Council also\u00a0passed a measure<\/a>\u00a0this April that\u00a0bars employers<\/a>\u00a0from requiring job applicants to pass a cannabis screening test as a condition of employment.\u00a0<\/p>\n There is likewise a sense of the tide turning on the judicial front. After years of upholding employee firings for use of cannabis even under state medical marijuana programs, the courts are finally starting to turn around on the question. The rights of Massachusetts medical patients were\u00a0upheld in state court last year<\/a>, as were those of patients in Rhode Island and Connecticut.<\/p>\n In February of this year,\u00a0another such victory was reported<\/a>\u00a0from Arizona \u2014 this time in the federal courts. Carol Whitmire, a former Arizona Walmart employee and card-holding medical marijuana patient who was fired after testing positive for cannabis, won a wrongful termination suit in the U.S. district court in Phoenix.\u00a0<\/p>\n A remedy from Capitol Hill may also be in the works. Legislation introduced in the House of Representatives this year would protect the jobs of federal employees who use cannabis in states where their use is currently legal. The\u00a0Fairness in Federal Drug Testing Under State Laws Act<\/a>\u00a0would prohibit cannabis drug-testing \u201cfrom being used as the sole factor to deny or terminate federal employment for civilian positions at executive branch agencies if the individual is in compliance with the marijuana laws in their state of residence.\u201d<\/p>\n And the Golden State, which has long been at the forefront of expanding freedom for cannabis users, may soon be catching up with Nevada, its supposedly more conservative neighbor to the east. California NORML asserts: \u201cEmployment drug testing has been shown in federal studies not to improve worker safety, but it\u2019s a great way to discriminate against cannabis consumers. We hope to sponsor a bill that will truly make marijuana legal for all adults and educate unions and employers about the needlessness of drug testing.\u201d<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>, what\u2019s your employer\u2019s cannabis use policy?\u00a0<\/p>\n The post Advocates Push Workers\u2019 Right to Cannabis Use<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
If you use cannabis on your own time in a state where it is legal, should that be grounds for terminating your employment or rejecting your application for a job? Advocates are starting to say no, and demanding action to protest workers\u2019 rights to use cannabis without the fear ofContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[159,148,11826,50,8739,484,702,11827,90,687,11828],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37828"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37828"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37829,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37828\/revisions\/37829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Progress in 15 States\u00a0<\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: Advocates Push Workers\u2019 Right to Cannabis Use<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"