This bill is part of the 2020 Cannabis Bills section of our ongoing update on California Cannabis Legislation – see the full California Cannabis Law Legislative Update which includes information on cannabis bills from other years.
AB 2355 (Bonta D) Employment discrimination: medical cannabis.
Existing law, the California Fair Employment and Housing Act, protects the rights of all persons to seek, obtain, and hold employment without discrimination on account of various personal characteristics, including medical condition. The act prohibits various forms of employment discrimination, including discharging or refusing to hire or to select for training programs on a prohibited basis, and empowers the Department of Fair Employment and Housing to investigate and prosecute complaints alleging unlawful practices.
Under existing law, the Compassionate Use Act of 1996, a patient or a patient’s primary caregiver who possesses or cultivates marijuana for personal medical purposes upon the written or oral recommendation or approval of a physician is not subject to conviction for offenses relating to possession and cultivation of marijuana. Existing law requires the State Department of Public Health to establish a voluntary program for the issuance of identification cards to qualified patients who are entitled to the protections of the act.
This bill would make it an unlawful employment practice for an employer or other entity to refuse to hire or employ a person, to refuse to select a person for a training program leading to employment, to bar or to discharge a person from employment or from a training program leading to employment, or to discriminate against an employee, because of the employee’s status as a qualified patient, or as a person with an identification card, as specified, for purposes of medical cannabis, subject to certain exceptions. The bill would grant people who use medical cannabis while employed the same rights to reasonable accommodation and the associated interactive process as are provided to workers prescribed other legal drugs under this section, subject to specified requirements.
The bill would prohibit these provisions from being interpreted as prohibiting employers from refusing to hire an individual, or from discharging or reasonably accommodating an employee, who is a qualified patient or person with an identification card for purposes of medical cannabis, if doing so could reasonably cause the employer to violate, lose a monetary or licensing-related benefit, or incur damages under federal law or regulations, as specified. The bill would exempt an employer from these provisions if the employer requires all employees and job applicants to be drug and alcohol free for legitimate safety reasons as required by federal or state laws and who are required to conduct applicant and ongoing testing of employees by those laws and regulations. The bill would also prohibit the employee protections described above from being construed as diminishing an employer’s ability to terminate an employee, refuse an accommodation, suspend an employee, or take any other lawful action against the employee if the employer discovers that the employee is using or impaired by medical cannabis on the property or premises of the place of employment or during the hours of employment. The bill would allow an employer to utilize impairment testing before or during work in addition to other measures to determine if an individual is impaired and allow the information provided by the test to be considered in conjunction with other considerations in determining reasonable accommodation.
Read more about California Cannabis Legislation – see the full California Cannabis Law Legislative Update.
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