For years, Massachusetts employers have grappled with an evolving legal landscape around marijuana in the workplace. Medical cannabis has been legal for more than a decade, with recreational use following shortly thereafter. Yet, despite these shifts, employers have retained broad discretion in how they screen job applicants for marijuana use. That could soon change.
A bill now under consideration, H. 2179, would prohibit most pre-employment marijuana testing, marking a significant departure from current practice. But what makes this bill particularly unusual isn’t just the ban—it’s the way it’s written. The proposed law states that an employer may only test a prospective employee for marijuana use after a conditional offer of employment has been extended. That seems straightforward enough. But in the next breath, it goes on to say that no employer may require a prospective employee to submit to marijuana testing as a condition of employment. This raises an obvious question: if an employer can only test after extending a conditional offer, but cannot make passing that test a condition of employment, what’s the point of testing at all?
The bill, if passed, would put Massachusetts in the company of jurisdictions like New York, Minnesota, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh, where pre-employment marijuana screening has been significantly curtailed if not outright banned. It would also force employers to rethink long-standing drug testing practices that have been widely used across...
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