Employers can be prohibited from discriminating towards most job candidates for off-duty marijuana use or for testing constructive for non-psychoactive THC metabolites below a brand new invoice filed within the Washington State Senate.
The laws, which was pre-filed for the 2023 session late final month, is one in every of a number of hashish reform proposals that shall be taken up at a listening to of the Senate Labor & Commerce Committee subsequent week. The employment invoice sponsor, Sen. Karen Keiser (D), chairs that panel.
The laws says that the legalization of adult-use marijuana within the state in 2012 “created a disconnect between potential workers’ authorized actions and employers’ hiring practices,” including that almost all drug exams solely detect inactive THC metabolites that may be in an individual’s system for weeks after use.
“Candidates are a lot much less more likely to check constructive or be disqualified for the presence of alcohol on a preemployment screening check in contrast with hashish, regardless of each being legally allowed managed substances,” the textual content says. “The legislature intends to stop limiting job alternatives based mostly on an applicant’s previous use of hashish.”
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The 2-page invoice would add a brand new part to state statute that will make it “illegal for an employer to discriminate towards an individual in hiring if the discrimination” in the event that they used hashish “off the job and away from the office” or in the event that they check constructive for THC metabolites as a part of employer-mandated drug screening.
There are some caveats to the proposal. For instance, it wouldn’t preclude an employer from utilizing drug exams that may detect lively impairment from marijuana.
It additionally says that the reform wouldn’t have an effect on “the rights or obligations of an employer to take care of a drug and alcohol free office, or every other rights or obligations of an employer required by federal legislation or regulation.”
Additional, individuals working in constructing or building trades, in addition to these whose jobs would require federal background test or safety clearance, wouldn’t be lined below the laws.
The invoice additionally says it doesn’t “preempt state or federal legal guidelines requiring an applicant to be examined for managed substances,” together with these “requiring candidates to be examined, or the way in which they’re examined, as a situation of employment, receiving federal funding or federal licensing-related advantages, or as required by a federal contract.”
The bill is one in every of three associated to hashish that shall be thought-about in committee subsequent week. The opposite two take care of marijuana business fairness points and creating the framework for hashish interstate commerce, pending a federal coverage change.
Office drug testing coverage is a subject that obtained appreciable consideration in state legislatures final 12 months, together with in California, the place Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed laws that prohibits most employers from discriminating towards staff based mostly on drug exams that present the presence of THC metabolites.
Again in July, Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) signed a invoice that bans most workplaces from firing or in any other case punishing workers for marijuana use. The reform was designed to broaden on a earlier measure lawmakers permitted to guard native authorities workers towards office discrimination attributable to their use of medical hashish.
Utah and Louisiana additionally enacted legal guidelines final 12 months that present employment protections for medical hashish sufferers.
In September, New Jersey marijuana regulators permitted steerage for employers that makes clear they can’t penalize staff based mostly solely on constructive drug exams for hashish metabolites.
After New York enacted leisure legalization, the state Division of Labor additionally instituted new guidelines stipulating that employers can not drug check most staff for marijuana.
Regardless of prohibitionist arguments that marijuana legalization harms the workforce, a latest research revealed by the Nationwide Bureau of Financial Analysis (NBER) discovered that, if something, the reform really will increase job alternatives.
Again in Washington State, lawmakers are once more contemplating drug possession penalties and associated points this session.
Following a state Supreme Court docket choice in February 2021 that invalidated the state’s felony legislation towards drug possession, lawmakers enacted a short lived criminalization coverage that’s set to run out on July 1. Some lawmakers need the state to formalize a coverage of decriminalized possession, however others need to preserve criminalization.