Los Angeles Times by Grace Toohey 9/19/2022
California workers won’t have to worry about being fired, or not hired, for off-the-clock marijuana use
It will soon be illegal for California employers to let workers’ off-site and outside-of-work marijuana use be a factor in hiring or firing decisions, according to a new state law.
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sunday signed into law a bill that makes California the seventh state in the U.S. that does not allow employers to discriminate against workers who smoke weed “off the job and away from the workplace.” The law goes into effect Jan. 1, 2024.
The law prohibits employers from making hiring, firing or other employment decisions based on a drug test that finds “nonpsychoactive cannabis metabolites” in someone’s hair or urine, which do not indicate current impairment, but that someone consumed cannabis recently, up to weeks prior, according to Assembly Bill 2188 that Assemblymember Bill Quirk (D-Hayward) sponsored.
“Urine tests are a highly offensive invasion of workers’ personal bodily privacy,” said Dale Gieringer, director of California’s NORML chapter, which advocates for progressive marijuana policies, about the bill after it passed. “Workers should have the same right to use cannabis as to use other legal substances off the job.”
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