On April 28, 2021, Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney signed Bill No. 200625 which, effective January 1, 2022, prohibits employers from requiring prospective employees to undergo testing for the presence of marijuana as a condition of employment. Currently, only New York City and Nevada have similar drug testing restrictions, but we expect this trend to continue. Nevada prohibits employers from taking
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The Week in Weed: April 30, 2021
Welcome back to The Week in Weed, your Friday look at what’s happening in the world of legalized marijuana.
Legislation to implement cannabis legalization moves forward in Montana. Florida’s ballot initiative runs into trouble. The South Dakota Supreme Court heard oral argument in the lawsuit seeking to overturn legalization. The NFL won’t test for marijuana use in the off-season. And
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California (Yet Again) Considers Legislation Regulating Employer Consideration of Marijuana Use
Marijuana remains a Schedule I drug under the federal Controlled Substances Act. However, more and more states and localities are either enacting marijuana laws with express employment protections or resolving court cases in favor of marijuana users. Yet, more than a decade ago, the California Supreme Court held in Ross v. RagingWire Telecomm., Inc., that employers have the right
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Most New York City Employers Now Prohibited from Conducting Pre-Employment Marijuana Tests
While it has been a challenge for employers to keep up with the explosion of medical and recreational marijuana laws spreading across the nation, employers have taken some comfort in that most of these states still grant employers the right to maintain a drug-free workplace and take action against those who test positive for marijuana, including rejecting job applicants testing
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Weed at Work: Should Employers Expand “Alcohol at Work” to Cover Recreational Cannabis?
Employers considering a tolerant attitude towards recreational cannabis in the workplace should consider safety hazards and legal liabilities. 
In the heyday of the two-martini lunch, employers regularly tolerated alcohol in the workplace or employees presumably impaired by alcohol returning to work. Over the succeeding decades, employers began to concentrate on the business and legal liabilities imposed by drug and alcohol use and impairment in the workplace — including increased absenteeism, mistakes, sexual harassment, workplace violence, and accidents/injuries. Employers also discovered that their insurance companies claimed exemptions for certain claims if the employee that created the issue had been consuming alcohol at work. As a result, employers largely began to adopt policies that prohibited employees from using or being under the influence of alcohol (and drugs) while at work. Most employers since have prohibited alcohol and drugs entirely or restricted alcohol to occasional company Christmas parties and social functions.
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Illinois Amends Recreational Cannabis Law To Protect Drug Testing By Employers
Earlier this month, Governor Pritzker signed into law SB 1557, revising the Recreational Cannabis Law to expand permissible marijuana testing and related adverse action.
The Original Legalization Bill As Enacted
The Illinois Cannabis Regulation and Tax Act (410 ILCS 705) (the “Legalization Act”) legalizes recreational cannabis for Illinois adults starting January 1, 2020. The Legalization Act specifically allows Illinois employers to enforce “reasonable zero tolerance or drug free workplace policies, or employment policies concerning drug testing, smoking, consumption, storage, or use of cannabis in the workplace or while on call provided that the policy is applied in a nondiscriminatory manner.” The Act also permits employers to prohibit employees from being under the influence of or using cannabis in the employer’s workplace or while on call. Further, the Act (i) allows employers to discipline or terminate an employee who violates the employer’s workplace drug policy, and (ii) specifically insulates employers from liability for disciplining or terminating employees based on the employer’s good faith belief that the employee was either impaired at work (as a result of using cannabis) or under the influence of cannabis while at work.
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Marijuana Breathalyzers: Could New Testing Methods Help Employers And Employees?
Employers are grappling with the wave of marijuana laws sweeping the nation, some of which provide very employee-friendly protections. While no state requires an employer to tolerate employees’ use of marijuana or impairment while they are working, present drug testing methodologies cannot determine whether an employee used marijuana two hours or two weeks ago. That might be changing as companies reportedly are closer to developing technology that will be able to detect recent use, a welcome development for both employers and employees.
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National Safety Council Endorses Zero Tolerance Prohibition on Cannabis/Marijuana for Safety-Sensitive Employees
The National Safety Council released a policy statement endorsing employer zero-tolerance policies for cannabis use for employees who work in safety-sensitive positions, explaining that no level of cannabis is safe.
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Are Multi-State Employers “Rolled Too Tight” on their Drug Testing Policies?
In a time where marijuana legalization is rapidly expanding, all employers should reassess their workplace drug testing policies to be sure they are in compliance with existing and soon to be effective state and local laws. Currently, thirty-three states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico have passed laws broadly legalizing marijuana in some form. Eleven of those states —
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Employer Drug-Testing in Smoklahoma
As previously reported, Oklahoma’s medical marijuana laws dictate that an employer cannot discriminate against a person in hiring or termination, or otherwise penalize a person due to the person’s status as a medical marijuana holder or as a result of a positive drug test. So now that Oklahoma has gone green and created such limitations on employers, how will
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