Signed into law on July 13, 2022, the District of Columbia Cannabis Employment Protections Act, provides major new workplace protections for marijuana users.

Under the Act, which went into effect on July 1, covered employers may not refuse to hire, fire, suspend, fail to promote, demote, or otherwise penalize a protected individual based on:

• The individual’s marijuana use;
• Their status as a medical marijuana program patient; or
• The presence of marijuana in the individual’s bodily fluids in an employer-required or employer-requested drug test, absent additional factors indicating that the individual is impaired.

Also under the Act, an employer must handle a qualifying patient’s use of medical marijuana to treat a disability in the same manner as it would handle the legal use of a controlled substance prescribed or taken under a licensed healthcare professional’s supervision.

There are some limits.

The Act authorizes covered employers to take cannabis-related adverse action if:

• The individual is in a position designated as safety sensitive – one in which it is reasonably foreseeable that an employee impaired from using drugs or alcohol would likely cause actual, immediate, and serious bodily injury or death;
• Federal law or a federal contract or funding agreement mandates the adverse action;
• The employee used, consumed, possessed, stored, delivered, transferred, displayed, transported, sold, purchased, or grew marijuana at the employee’s workplace or during their...

Read Full Story: https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMiTmh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lmpkc3VwcmEuY29tL2xl...