Business
Employers In Medical Marijuana States Can Still Drug Test Employees, Federal Judge Rules
In yet another case with implications for workers who are legally using medical marijuana under state laws, a federal judge has given a New Jersey business permission to continue drug testing employees for cannabis—and to punish them if they test positive, regardless of whether they have doctors’ recommendations.
Of the 31 states that have legalized medical marijuana, only nine have some form of explicit employment protection for qualified medical cannabis patients.
New Jersey is not one of those states. And no state protects an employee from termination if the employer stands to “lose a benefit under federal law,” such as a license or funding, according to legal analysts.
Daniel Cotto Jr. had worked as a forklift driver at Ardagh Glass since 2011. According to his suit, at the time of his hiring, the company was aware he was using medical marijuana to treat pain stemming from a 2007 injury.
The company terminated him in 2017 after he declined to submit to breathalyzer and urine screenings following a 2016 accident, according to NJ.com.
As per the suit, a company human resources manager told him his medical marijuana use was a “problem.”
Cotto sued, citing state law barring discrimination.
This week, Judge Robert Kugler of U.S. District Court in Camden, New Jersey dismissed the case, ruling that the state’s medical marijuana law “does not mandate employer acceptance—or, more particularly, to waive a drug test—of an employee’s use of a substance that is illegal under federal law.”
Without such protections, according to precedent in New Jersey courts, employers “may continue to [ban] its use through lawful workplace drug testing policies,” Kugler wrote.
In Cotto’s case, his job as a forklift driver may have scotched his case from the beginning. A 1992 state Supreme Court decision ruled that forklift operators specifically are in a “safety-sensitive” position, and thus can be drug tested.
(A recent study showed that workplace deaths are significantly lower in states with legal medical marijuana.)
“Ardagh Glass is within its rights to refuse to waive a drug test for federally-prohibited narcotics,” wrote Kugler, who added that New Jersey is also an “at-will” employment state—which means that employers are permitted to terminate employees “for good reason, bad reason, or no reason at all.”
The only exceptions, under discrimination laws, are if an employee is fired for being a member of a protected class, such as a sufferer of a disability.
Though medical marijuana users like Cotto may argue that injuries that require prescription medication—or cannabis—places them in such a class, Cotto did not argue that in his suit, according to Kugler.
As per NJ.com:
“Kugler said in his ruling that Cotto was not claiming that Ardagh was discriminating against him based on his disability, but ‘discriminated against him by refusing to accommodate his use of medical marijuana by waiving a drug test.'”
The case reflects the necessity for states to include employment protections in their medical marijuana laws.
It also presages another impending issue—employment protections for users of recreational marijuana. Currently, no states offer such protections, meaning legal users of cannabis still face risks that users of alcohol or other drugs do not.
To that end, Rep. Charlie Crist (D-FL) last month filed legislation that would shield most federal employees from being fired for off-the-job marijuana use that is legal in their state.
Congressman Pushes Federal Employment Protections For Marijuana Consumers
