The medical marijuana battle between the feds and California continues.
The California Supreme Court - which had heard arguments late last year in Ross v. Ragingwire, Inc. - has just issued a 5 to 2 decision in favor of the employer who had terminated the employee.
The issue was whether it was an FEHA violation for the company to terminate the worker for testing positive for marijuana use since he had a valid prescription under the 1999 California law authorizing such medicinal use (and was never accused of smoking "on duty").
The employee was fired 8 days after being hired when his tests came back positive. Proponents for the employer had argued that since it's still a prohibited drug under federal law, the employer had no choice but to terminate the worker.
The employee argued that since the passage of the state law permitting the medical use of marijuana in 1999, the employee has a state right to have the drug in his system and, therefore, using that against him by terminating him constitutes "wrongful termination" under the Fair Employment and Housing Act.
During last year's oral arguments, the Chief Justice had voiced his sympathy for both sides of the debate by commenting at the beginning, "California has been a pioneer; the federal government has not... What do we do about placing an employer in the position of being a law violator under federal law notwithstanding how understanding California may be?"
He ended up concurring with the majority opinion, authored by Justice Werdegar, which concluded that the Compassionate Use Act did not require an employer to accommodate marijuana use.
"... [T]he
only "right" to obtain and use marijuana created by the Compassionate Use Act is
the right of 'a patient, or . . . a patient's primary caregiver, [to] possess or
cultivate marijuana for the personal medical purposes of the patient upon the
written or oral recommendation or approval of a physician' without thereby
becoming subject to punishment under sections 11357 and 11358 of the Health
and Safety Code.
"An employer's refusal to
accommodate an employee's use of marijuana does not affect, let alone eviscerate,
the immunity to criminal liability provided in the act. We thus give full effect to
the limited 'right to obtain and use marijuana' granted in the act by enforcing it according to its terms.
"... [D]efendant has not prevented
plaintiff from having access to marijuana. Defendant has only refused to employ
plaintiff....
We thus conclude plaintiff cannot state a cause of action for wrongful
termination in violation of public policy."
In light of the result, it's a bit puzzling why the Court bothered to accept the case in the first place since the employee had already lost at both the trial and appellate levels.
In a separate concurring and dissenting opinion, Justice Kennard pointed out the sheer folly in trying to reconcile inherently conflicting federal and state laws by ruling that a person could still legally use marijuana under state law while still legally getting fired for doing so.
"The majority's holding disrespects the will of California's voters who,
when they enacted the Compassionate Use Act, surely never intended that persons
who availed themselves of its provisions would thereby disqualify themselves
from employment."
To read full opinion,
PLEASE CLICK HERE.
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