employment

Subscribe to employment via RSS

Nevada, like most states, has legalized cannabis for medicinal use. Although permitted under state law, a Nevada employee may still face discipline under a company’s drug policy. To address that concern, the Nevada Legislature passed a law requiring employers to attempt to make reasonable accommodations for its employees’ use of medical cannabis outside of the workplace. As a matter of first impression, the Nevada Supreme Court recently decided that employees may sue employers who violate that law.Continue Reading Nevada Supreme Court Finds a Private Right of Action Under Nevada’s Medical Cannabis Law

The District of Columbia legalized cannabis for medicinal purposes in 2010 and began to permit individuals to use the drug recreationally in 2015. Last month, on July 13, 2022, Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser signed the “Cannabis Employment Protections Amendment Act of 2022” (D.C. Act 24-483), joining the growing list of jurisdictions prohibiting most employers from taking adverse action (e.g., rejecting job applicants or terminating employees) for off-duty cannabis use. The bill must go through a congressional review period before becoming law.

About the Act

What employers may not do:

The Act will make it unlawful for most employers to refuse to hire, terminate, or take other adverse employment action based on (1) an individual’s use of cannabis or status as a medical cannabis program patient or (2) the presence of cannabinoid metabolites in the individual’s bodily fluids in any drug test, absent “additional factors indicating impairment.” On the latter point, an employer can take action against an employee for cannabis use if “the employee manifests specific articulable symptoms while working, or during the employee’s hours of work, that substantially decrease or lessen the employee’s performance of the duties or tasks of the employee’s job position,” or if such “specific articulable symptoms interfere with an employer’s obligation to provide a safe and healthy workplace as required by District or federal occupational safety and health law.”Continue Reading District of Columbia Provides Employment Protections to Cannabis Users

Last month, a Hawaii federal district court judge denied an employer’s motion to dismiss an applicant’s claim for disability discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) where the employer merely assumed that an applicant who admitted to having a medical marijuana card was a current marijuana user and would fail a drug test.  
Continue Reading Possession of a Medical Marijuana Card Doesn’t Necessarily Prove Current Drug Use