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b0red5tiff
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Reged: 09/16/06
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Calif. High Court Says Companies Can Fire Medical Pot Users
02/10/08 10:33 AM
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http://news.lp.findlaw.com/andrews/h/hea/20080208/20080208_ross.html
California's medical-marijuana law has suffered another blow after the state Supreme Court ruled that employers may fire workers who test positive for the drug.
In a 5-2 decision the court said the 1996 initiative, which bars the state from criminalizing the medical use of the drug, does not narrow an employer's authority to fire workers for breaking federal drug laws.
"We have no reason to conclude the voters intended to speak so broadly, and in a context so far removed from the criminal law, as to require employers to accommodate marijuana use," the majority wrote Jan. 24.
The decision further chips away at the voter-approved measure, known in the state as the Compassionate Use Act. In 2005 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that federal anti-drug laws can be enforced against patients in states that allow the cultivation of cannabis for medical purposes.
Americans for Safe Access, a medical-marijuana advocacy group, said it was disappointed by the latest ruling.
"[W]e remain hopeful that the Legislature will come to the aid of patients by preventing the sort of discrimination that is likely to occur from such a decision," ASA Chief Counsel Joe Elford said in a statement.
The ruling comes in a suit filed by Gary Ross, a 45-year-old disabled veteran and medical-marijuana user in Carmichael, Calif. He said his physician recommended cannabis for chronic back pain that resulted from injuries sustained during his time in the Air Force.
Ross filed the suit after his employer, RagingWire Telecommunications, fired him in 2001 for testing positive for the drug. Ross maintained that his use of the drug did not have a negative effect on his job performance and that he had informed RagingWire before he was hired that he was using medical cannabis outside the workplace under his doctor's recommendation.
He accused the company of discriminating against him because of his medical condition.
The Sacramento County Superior Court sided with his employer, as did the 3rd District Court of Appeal. Americans for Safe Access then appealed to the state Supreme Court on Ross' behalf, with the same result.
"The Compassionate Use Act does not eliminate marijuana's potential for abuse or the employer's legitimate interest in whether an employee uses the drug," the majority found.
In a dissenting opinion joined by Justice Carlos R. Moreno, Justice Joyce L. Kennard called the majority's reasoning "conspicuously lacking in compassion."
"The majority's decision leaves many Californians with serious illnesses just two options: continue receiving the benefits of marijuana use in the treatment of cancer, anorexia, AIDS, chronic pain, spasticity, glaucoma, arthritis, migraine or other illness and become unemployed, giving up what may be their only source of income, or continue in their employment, discontinue marijuana treatment, and try to endure their chronic pain or other condition for which marijuana may provide the only relief," Justice Kennard wrote.
"Surely this cruel choice is not what California voters intended when they enacted the [law]," she added.
In the wake of the decision, California Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, said he will introduce legislation to protect the right to employment for medical-marijuana users.
"[T]he people of California did not intend that patients be unemployed in order to use medical marijuana," Leno said in a statement.
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