Search Results: employment protection (16)

Photo: Steve Rhodes/flickr
State Senator Mark Leno: “When Californians approved the compassionate use of cannabis, they never intended for it to apply only to unemployed people”

​The State Senate Judiciary Committee voted 3-2 on Tuesday, approving a bill that would protect California’s medical marijuana patients from discrimination at the workplace.

Senate Bill 129 was introduced by Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) in January as an attempt to clarify the legislative intent of the state’s Medical Marijuana Program Act. While clearly establishing a medical marijuana patient’s right to work, SB 129 continues to prohibit on-the-job impairment.
The bill now moves to the Senate floor for an as-of-yet unscheduled vote.

Photo: Addiction Inbox

​​When Arizona in November became the 15th state in the union to legalize medical marijuana, with voters approving Prop 203 by a thin margin, they got something that perhaps no other state has: employment protection for patients.

It’s much more difficult to get a doctor’s recommendation for cannabis in Arizona, and possession is limited to only 2.5 ounces, nobody can grow more than 12 plants, and if you live within 25 miles of a dispensary, you can’t grow at all. But unless you show up at work noticeably impaired, you won’t be fired simply for being a medical marijuana patient, points out Joe Eskinazi at the SF Weekly.
In California, Oregon, Washington, and most or all other medical marijuana states — even though you aren’t breaking the law if you use marijuana medically with a doctor’s recommendation — you can still get your ass fired in a heartbeat if, say, you have a workplace accident and get the standard urinalysis that follows.

Graphic: Rose Law Group
Most companies won’t fire you for prescription drug use. But they’ll sack your ass in a heartbeat for the medical use of marijuana — even in states where it’s legal.

Washington Supreme Court To Decide

Washington voters approved the medical use of marijuana back in 1998, but state law is unclear on whether employees can be fired for legally using cannabis. Now, 13 years after voters legalized medicinal pot, that question is likely to be answered by the Washington Supreme Court, which heard a test case on the issue last month, reports Jonathan Martin at The Seattle Times.

Photo: Stoel Rives World of Employment

​Can medical marijuana patients be fired from their jobs for legally using cannabis with a doctor’s authorization? That’s the question before the Washington Supreme Court, which heard arguments Tuesday from attorneys in the case of a medical marijuana patient fired by a telemarketing firm for failing a drug test in 2006.

Voters in 1998 would be “flabbergasted” to hear someone could be fired for legally using medical marijuana away from work, in this case to alleviate migraine headaches, argued Michael Subit, attorney for the woman called “Jane Roe” in court proceedings to protect her identity, reports Josh Farley at the Kitsap Sun.

“The Legislature understood (voters) were giving broad permission” to use marijuana medicinally, argued Subit, “…and that’s why they [legal medical marijuana patients]can’t be fired.”
But James Shore, attorney representing Teletech, claimed the law passed by voters provides only a defense in court to patients who have a doctor’s recommendation to use marijuana. Shore said Washington’s medical cannabis law does not offer employment protection.
“An employer could permit it in the workplace if they want to,” Shore said of medical marijuana. “But they don’t have to.”

Backers of the California Cannabis Hemp Initiative have been given the go-ahead from the state to begin collecting the required 504,760 signatures needed to get their legalization bill before voters this fall.
If approved, the measure – dubbed the Jack Herer Initiative — would legalize cannabis use for adults 21 and up, allow for licensed and taxed cannabis retail sales, loosen restrictions on doctors recommending medical cannabis for minors, restrict drug testing for pot by employers and forbid any state funds from going toward enforcement of federal marijuana laws. But that’s a big “if”. The signatures must be collected by Aug. 18, and that’s not going to be cheap or easy to achieve.

Stoel Rives World of Employment

A federal appeals court on Monday decided that when cities shut down medical marijuana dispensaries, doing so does not violate the federally protected rights of disabled people.

A three-judge panel on the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit by severely disabled Californians who were authorized by their doctors to use cannabis, reports Maura Dolan at the Los Angeles Times.
The patients had sued the Orange County, California cities of Costa Mesa and Lake Forest, charging that the cities’ attempts to shutter medicinal cannabis dispensaries violated the federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which prohibits discrimination based on disability.
The 9th Circuit ruled that federal law does not protect the use of drugs banned by the federal government.
“We recognize that the plaintiffs are gravely ill,” wrote Judge Raymond C. Fisher, a Clinton appointee, for the court.
The patients’ attempt to win legal protection involves “not only their right to live comfortably, but also their basic human dignity,” Judge Fisher wrote, and “California has embraced marijuana as an effective treatment for debilitating pain.”

Photo: Joseph Casias
Cancer patient Joseph Casias, former Employee of the Year at Walmart: “I just don’t understand why it is so bad to use something that helps me and many others who suffer with illnesses and pain”

​Once in awhile, corporate America commits such a glaring injustice that people are sickened by the inhumanity of it. Such was the case last year when a Michigan Walmart fired its former Employee of the Year, Joseph Casias, after he showed up positive for marijuana on a routine drug test — despite the fact that he is a seriously ill cancer patient legally using medical cannabis on the recommendation of his physician.

Casias, 30, who has an inoperable brain tumor, was sacked by the Battle Creek Walmart after he failed a routine urine screen following a workplace injury. And despite a chorus of nationwide protest, the corporate behemoth stuck by its heartless decision and eventually prevailed in court after a judge upheld the dismissal.
Casias said that he only used marijuana after his work shift, and never used on the job. He tried cannabis after his oncologist suggested it.

Photo: More Cool Pictures

​​​Connecticut’s lawmakers voted on Tuesday to make Connecticut the 14th state to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana, and Governor Dannel P. Malloy has promised to sign the bill.

After about three hours of debate, it passed the House 90 to 57. Over the weekend, the 18-18 tie in the state Senate had been broken by Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman, her first and only vote during the session, reports Mary E. O’Leary at the New Haven Register.

Supporters argued that treating the possession of less than a half-ounce of marijuana as in infraction with a $150 fine, rather than as a criminal misdemeanor, will free up prosecutors, public defenders, probation officers and other court officials to deal with serious crime.
Connecticut is only the second state to enact decrim legislatively in the past decade, according to the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). (Massachusetts enacted a similar law via ballot initiave in 2009.)

Photo: Katy Batdorff/The Grand Rapids Press
Cancer patient Joseph Casias was Walmart’s Employee of the Year — but they fired him after learning he uses medical marijuana with a doctor’s authorization.

​Walmart’s former Employee of the Year won’t be going back to work there. A federal judge on Friday ruled that Michigan’s medical marijuana law protects legal users from arrest, but doesn’t protect them from employers’ policies which ban pot use.

Joseph Casias, who has an inoperable brain tumor, was fired by the Battle Creek Walmart after he failed a routine drug test following a workplace injury, reports John Agar at The Grand Rapids Press.
“The fundamental problem with (Casias’) case is that the (medical marijuana law) does not regulate private employment,” U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker wrote in his 20-page opinion.
“Rather, the Act provides a potential defense to criminal prosecution or other adverse action by the state… All the (law) does is give some people limited protection from prosecution by the state, or from other adverse state action in carefully limited medical marijuana situations,” the federal judge ruled.
According to Judge Jonker, the law “says nothing about private employment rights. Nowhere does the (law) state that the statue regulates private employment, that private employees are protected from disciplinary action should they use medical marijuana, or that private employers must accommodate the use of medical marijuana outside the workplace.”

Graphic: Working World

​Should companies be able to fire employees for using medical marijuana — at home, with no effects on job performance — even in states where the medicinal use of cannabis is legal?

Washington judges and lawmakers will be wrestling with that question next month as the state Supreme Court hears the case of a woman fired for legally using pot medicinally, and the Legislature looks at a bill to expand patient protections in the state’s 12-year-old medical marijuana law, reports Vanessa Ho of the Seattle P.I.
The case before the high court involves a woman suing her former employer after she failed a drug test and was fired from a customer-service job in Bremerton. The woman, using “Jane Roe” as a pseudonym in court records, was using marijuana authorized by her doctor for debilitating migraines.
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