Calif.: Firing Medical Marijuana Users OK

(CBS/AP)  Employers can fire workers found to have used medical marijuana even if it was legally prescribed, the California Supreme Court ruled Thursday in another setback for California in its increasingly rancorous clash with federal law over medical pot use.

The high court upheld a Sacramento telecommunications company's firing of a man who flunked a company-ordered drug test. Gary Ross held a medical marijuana card authorizing him to legally use marijuana to treat a back injury sustained while serving in the Air Force.

The company, Ragingwire Inc., successfully argued it rightfully fired Ross because all marijuana use is illegal under federal law, which does not recognize the medical marijuana laws in California and 11 other states.

"No state law could completely legalize marijuana for medical purposes because the drug remains illegal under federal law," Justice Kathryn Werdegar wrote for the 5-2 majority.

Further, the state Supreme Court said the so-called Compassionate Use Act passed by California voters in 1996 had nothing to do with employment laws.

"Nothing in the text or history of the Compassionate Use Act suggests the voters intended the measure to address the respective rights and duties of employers and employees," Werdegar wrote. "Under California law, an employer may require preemployment drug tests and take illegal drug use into consideration in making employment decisions."

The Court said that just because certain people for medical reasons are allowed to smoke marijuana without fear of going to jail doesn't mean those same people can turn around and say they have a disability that must be protected by law from employers, says CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen.

"I don't know how many people this would affect but I do know that had the ruling gone the other way it would have been a very, very big deal," Cohen said.

A 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision declared that state medicinal marijuana laws don't protect users from prosecution. The Drug Enforcement Agency and other federal agencies have been actively shutting down major medical marijuana dispensaries throughout the state over the last two years and charging their operators with serious felony distributions charges.

Raginwire said it fired Ross because it feared it could be the target of a federal raid, among other reasons.

The Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority and the Western Electrical Contractors Association Inc. had joined Ragingwire's case, arguing that companies could lose federal contracts and grants if they allowed employees to smoke pot.

The conservative nonprofit Pacific Legal Foundation said in a friend-of-the-court filing that employers could also be liable for damage done by high workers.

Ross had argued that medical marijuana users should receive the same workplace protection from discipline that employees with valid painkiller prescriptions do.

The nonprofit marijuana advocacy group Americans for Safe Access, which represents Ross, estimates that 300,000 Americans use medical marijuana. The Oakland-based group said it has received hundreds of employee discrimination complaints in California since it began tracking the issue in 2005.

Justice Joyce Kennard dissented attacking the majority's ruling in the dissent as "conspicuously lacking in compassion." Kennard said the ruling "disrespects" the California medical marijuana law, and said employers should be barred from firing workers who use medical marijuana as long as they continue to perform their jobs adequately.

"The majority gives employers permission to fire any employee who uses marijuana on a doctor's recommendation, without requiring the employer to show that this medical use will in any way impair the employer's business interests," wrote Kennard. She was joined in the dissent by Justice Carlos Moreno.

The American Medical Association advocates keeping marijuana classified as a tightly controlled and dangerous drug that should not be legalized until more research is done.

[beehive21-2009]

The cigarette companies pay off the court ,for favorable treatment?,if,cigs are legal everything should be legal ,nothing worst than cigs,?

[erasmus6]

Hey, how''s it going, all you potheads? Hahahaha

[grammawhamma]

"Alcohol causes more death, violence and destruction than cocaine, heroin and meth combined."

posted by talypatr

And you pulled this statistic from where????

[honestabe8]

taddles: well put.

[taddles-2009]

"The American Medical Association advocates keeping marijuana classified as a tightly controlled and dangerous drug that should not be legalized until more research is done."

Bull$hit! The fuc%ing AMA won''t advocate it because it''s cheap and easily grown and they and the pharmaceutical conglomerates can''t make any money selling it. The AMA is an archaic pathetic organization run by greedy stupid old men. How a body of science can be so overrun by self interest and arrogance is beyond belief.

[gunownerdan]

COPS SAY LEGALIZE MARIJUANA!
After nearly four decades of fueling the U.S. policy of a war on drugs with over a trillion tax dollars and 37 million arrests for nonviolent drug offenses, our confined population has quadrupled making building prisons the fastest growing industry in the United States. More than 2.2 million of our citizens are currently incarcerated and every year we arrest an additional 1.9 million more guaranteeing those prisons will be bursting at their seams. Every year we choose to continue this war will cost U.S. taxpayers another 69 billion dollars. Despite all the lives we have destroyed and all the money so ill spent, today illicit drugs are cheaper, more potent, and far easier to get than they were 35 years ago at the beginning of the war on drugs. Meanwhile, people continue dying in our streets while drug barons and terrorists continue to grow richer than ever before. We would suggest that this scenario must be the very definition of a failed public policy. This madness must cease!
www.LEAP.cc

[rushman71]

donyang2000: this is a place for personal opinions and comments. Stop advertising bogus information!!!

[ubrew12]

Unbelievable that you can smoke nicotine (tobacco) legally and NOT get fired,

but POT, which is actually good for your nerves and your appetite, indeed, your entire nervous system... THAT will get you fired!!!

Truly an ***-backwards nation...

The sort that would actually invade a non-combatant like Iraq. I guess it figures....

[merlgrey]

War on drugs.

Since Richard Nixon declared his "War on Drugs" in 1970, the so-called "law and order" approach has prevailed among Republican politicians.

John McCain when asked if he saw any similarity between Alcohol Prohibition and the War on Drugs, he replied that there was no similarity at all.

Mitt Romney has stated we need to "reinstitute a campaign as powerful as ''Just Say No'' was."

On the reality side%u2026%u2026%u2026

William F. Buckley, Jr., longtime editor of The National Review and the individual regarded by many as the father of modern conservatism. "Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value," he wrote, "marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could."

Republican economist Milton Friedman, a Nobel laureate, spoke consistently against Drug Prohibition until his death in 2006. Friedman wrote "As a nation, we have been destroying foreign countries because we cannot enforce our own laws. As a nation, we have been responsible for the murder of literally hundreds of thousands of people at home and abroad by fighting a war that should never have been started and can be won, if at all, only by converting the United States into a police state."

Ron Paul is a very notable Republican politician who says things like "I''ve always been very clear that the Drug War is a lot worse than the drugs themselves."

[josie7876]

And prescription drugs are ok? The boss doing the firing is hooked on Prozac or a number of other scripts. Probably an alcoholic too.