Politics
Federal Court Gives Pennsylvania Medical Marijuana Patient Initial Win In Lawsuit Against Truck Company That Rescinded Job Offer
A federal court has given an initial victory to a Pennsylvania man who sued a major truck leasing company that rescinded a job offer after learning about his status as a registered medical marijuana patient who has used cannabis to treat anxiety disorder.
In the ruling from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Judge Catherine Henry denied the trucking company Penske’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, finding that its claims contesting allegations of discrimination were unconvincing.
Hosea Tyler applied for a job to become a sales and operations management trainee and received a job offer last year. After informing his recruiter about the fact that he possessed a medical cannabis card that a doctor recommended for his anxiety, he was told his start date would be delayed—and then later that he wouldn’t be getting the job after all because, as he quoted the recruiter saying, Penske “doesn’t like medical marijuana cards” and the company “can’t accommodate your medical marijuana card.”
Despite offering to abstain from cannabis and find an alternative treatment, “Penske did not change its course, and ultimately informed Tyler in late July that it was rescinding his contingent job offer,” the judge wrote.
In response to the denial, Tyler filed a lawsuit alleging that the employment decision constituted a violation of anti-discrimination laws—arguing that being denied the job simply for disclosing his medical cannabis patient status meant Penske was essentially penalizing him for having the mental health condition he had used marijuana to treat.
The company’s motion to dismiss didn’t adequately contest the claims, the court ruled on Wednesday, so the lawsuit can proceed.
“It is not necessary at this level for Tyler to prove that his non-hiring was caused by his anxiety disorder, only to show that it would be a reasonable inference” based on what he was told about how simply having a medical cannabis card was ground for rescinding the offer.
“Here, Penske offered him the job, then became aware that he was prescribed medication for an anxiety disorder, and then rescinded the offer. No other intervening actions are apparent,” the judge said. “Penske’s possible aversion to hiring employees who use drugs prohibited by federal law is one reasonable inference for the cause, but so too is Penske’s possible aversion to hiring employees who have anxiety disorders. The complaint is adequate on this point.”
The ruling isn’t asserting that Penske would have been legally required to accommodate Tyler’s use of medical cannabis if he was hired. While there seemed to be initial confusion around whether his role would entire operating commercial vehicles—in which case, cannabis use would be prohibited under existing federal statue—the more pertinent issue in this lawsuit is that he was never tested for marijuana. Tyler disclosed having used cannabis about one week before being informed about the rescinded offer, but he said he “was not currently using at the time of his non-hire/termination.”
“This scant information is not enough to determine that Tyler was unqualified to drive… at the time of the recission,” Henry said.
Therefore, the case may proceed and Penske will be required to answer to the claims of discrimination.
Meanwhile, a recent policy paper from a pair of companies in the trucking industry says the sector was short about 80,000 drivers last year—an issue it asserts was exacerbated by workers testing positive for marijuana under the federal Department of Transportation’s (DOT) strict, zero-tolerance drug policy.
DOT finalized new testing policies in 2023 to allow oral saliva drug testing as an alternative to urine-based tests. This past December, critics lamented that more than a year and a half after finalizing the rule, federal officials had yet to set up the infrastructure necessary to allow the new testing procedure to be used.
Congressional lawmakers at hearings in March heard from representatives of the trucking industry, who called for wider use of hair-follicle testing in the industry. The chair of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), meanwhile, recommended better education for drivers.
Last month, meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a trucker who sued a cannabis company after he was fired over a positive THC test that he said was caused by consuming a hemp-derived CBD product.
Separately, a Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) official recently downplayed criticism from the CEO of a drug-testing company that more widespread use of saliva-based drug testing “means truckers who use cannabis will be able to do so with near impunity, as long as they avoid a drug test for a couple of days.”
In March, the issue of marijuana-impaired driving arose congressional hearing, with a representative of the Governors Highway Safety Association emphasizing the importance of roadside drug testing as a tool to help combat deadly car crashes.
The transportation industry also advised Congress in January that if marijuana is federally rescheduled, businesses want assurances that they won’t have to forgo zero-tolerance drug policies for drivers—while stressing that a key problem for the sector is a lack of technology to detect impaired driving.
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While saliva and blood tests can detect recent marijuana use better than urine or hair samples, there’s another wrinkle: As recently acknowledged by a U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) researcher, it’s unclear whether a person’s THC levels are even a reliable indicator of impairment.
Last October, a study preprint posted on The Lancet by an eight-author team representing Canada’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Health Canada and Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia identified and assessed a dozen peer-reviewed studies measuring “the strength of the linear relationship between driving outcomes and blood THC” published through September 2023.
The issue was also examined in a federally funded study last year that identified two different methods of more accurately testing for recent THC use that accounts for the fact that metabolites of the cannabinoid can stay present in a person’s system for weeks or months after consumption.
A 2023 congressional report for a Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies (THUD) bill said that the House Appropriations Committee “continues to support the development of an objective standard to measure marijuana impairment and a related field sobriety test to ensure highway safety.”
A year earlier Sen. John Hickenlooper (D) of Colorado sent a letter to the Department of Transportation (DOT) seeking an update on that status of a federal report into research barriers that are inhibiting the development of a standardized test for marijuana impairment on the roads. The department was required to complete the report under a large-scale infrastructure bill signed by President Joe Biden, but it missed its reporting deadline.
Meanwhile, National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) last year warned that marijuana rescheduling could create a “blind spot” with respect to drug testing of federally regulated workers in safety-sensitive positions—despite assurances from then-U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg that the cannabis rescheduling proposal “would not alter” the federal drug testing requirements.
At a House committee hearing, Buttigieg had referenced concerns from ATA “about the broad public health and safety consequences of reclassification on the national highway system and its users,” which the trucking association voiced in a letter to the secretary.
As more states legalize marijuana, a federal report published last year showed that the number of positive drug tests among commercial drivers fell in 2023 compared to the year before, dropping from 57,597 in 2022 to 54,464 in the prior year. At the same time, however, the number of drivers who refused to be screened at all also increased by 39 percent.
Another question found that 65.4 percent of motor carriers believed current marijuana testing procedures should be replaced with methods that measure active impairment.
Cannabis reform advocates, meanwhile, have also called on federal officials to change what they call “discriminatory” drug testing practices around the trucking industry.
A top Wells Fargo analyst said in 2022 that there’s one main reason for rising costs and worker shortages in the transportation sector: federal marijuana criminalization and resulting drug testing mandates that persist even as more states enact legalization.
Then-Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) sent a letter to the head of DOT in 2022, emphasizing that the agency’s policies on drug testing truckers and other commercial drivers for marijuana are unnecessarily costing people their jobs and contributing to supply chain issues.
Separately, the Congressional Research Service in 2019 determined that while “marijuana consumption can affect a person’s response times and motor performance … studies of the impact of marijuana consumption on a driver’s risk of being involved in a crash have produced conflicting results, with some studies finding little or no increased risk of a crash from marijuana usage.”
Another study from 2022 found that smoking CBD-rich marijuana had “no significant impact” on driving ability, despite the fact that all study participants exceeded the per se limit for THC in their blood.
Read the federal court’s ruling in the medical cannabis patient and trucking company lawsuit below:
