Seyfarth Synopsis: Every year, employers find themselves revisiting their marijuana and drug testing policies to account for newly enacted laws at the state and local level. Now is no different. Below are some highlights of what happened in 2021.
Connecticut
On June 22, 2021, Connecticut legalized recreational marijuana use by adults 21 years and older.
Continue Reading Marijuana Laws Impacting Employers Spread Like a Weed in 2021: A Year in Review
Seyfarth Synopsis: Effective January 1, 2022, most Philadelphia employers will be prohibited from requiring prospective employees to undergo testing for the presence of marijuana as a condition of employment.
Currently, only New York City and Nevada have similar drug testing restrictions, but we expect this trend to continue. Nevada prohibits employers from taking adverse action
Continue Reading Philadelphia’s Restrictions on Pre-Employment Marijuana Tests Become Effective January 1, 2022
By Jennifer L. Mora and Adam R. Young
Seyfarth Synopsis: Employers considering a tolerant attitude towards recreational cannabis in the workplace should consider safety hazards and legal liabilities.
In the heyday of the two-martini lunch, employers regularly tolerated alcohol in the workplace or employees presumably impaired by alcohol returning to work. Over the succeeding decades, employers began to concentrate
Continue Reading Weed at Work: Should Employers Expand “Alcohol at Work” to Cover Recreational Cannabis?
By Anthony Califano, Jennifer Mora, and Frederick T. Smith
Seyfarth Synopsis: Employers are grappling with the wave of marijuana laws sweeping the nation, some of which provide very employee-friendly protections. While no state requires an employer to tolerate employees’ use of marijuana or impairment while they are working, present drug testing methodologies cannot determine whether an employee
Continue Reading Marijuana Breathalyzers: Could New Testing Methods Help Employers And Employees?
By James L. Curtis and Adam R. Young
Seyfarth Synopsis: The National Safety Council released a policy statement endorsing employer zero-tolerance policies for cannabis use for employees who work in safety-sensitive positions, explaining that no level of cannabis is safe.
Unlike a test for Blood Alcohol Content, testing results for Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) metabolites (the psychoactive components of cannabis)
Continue Reading National Safety Council Endorses Zero Tolerance Prohibition on Cannabis/Marijuana for Safety-Sensitive Employees
By Mark A. Lies, II, Brent I. Clark, Adam R. Young, and Craig B. Simonsen
Seyfarth Synopsis: OSHA has just issued a Standard Interpretation clarifying the Obama-era guidance that prohibited incentive programs and circumscribed post-incident drug testing; “Clarification of OSHA’s Position on Workplace Safety Incentive Programs and Post-Incident Drug Testing Under 29 C.F.R. §1904.35(b)(1)(iv).”
We previously
Continue Reading OSHA Clarifies Position on Lawful Post-Incident Drug Testing and Reverses Course on Safety Incentive Programs
Seyfarth Synopsis: The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission recently settled lawsuits with two employers it claims violated the Americans with Disabilities Act after rejecting a job applicant and terminating an employee based on their prescription drug use.
The opioid crisis is dominating the news. And, employers have reason to be concerned. According to the Bureau of
Continue Reading EEOC Scrutinizes Employer Policies Regarding Prescription Drug Use
By Anthony Califano & Timothy Buckley
Seyfarth Synopsis: A recently-filed lawsuit in the federal district court in Arizona alleges that an employee’s use of medical marijuana may be permissible under the federal Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). Although the employee faces an uphill battle, the case presents a challenge to the commonly-held view that the ADA does not support
Continue Reading A Potential P[l]ot Twist for Medical Marijuana and the ADA
By Anthony Califano, Ariel D. Cudkowicz, John Ayers-Mann, and Frederick T. Smith
Seyfarth Synopsis: On May 23, 2017, in Callaghan v. Darlington Fabrics Co., a Rhode Island Superior Court issued a unique decision regarding employer obligations to medical marijuana users.
The Judge who penned the decision began his analysis by quoting a 1967 lyric from
Continue Reading Refusal To Hire Medical Pot Users Just Got Riskier–At Least In Rhode Island
By Caitlyn Crisp and Michael Cross
Seyfarth Synopsis: California voters gave the green light to recreational use of marijuana with the passage of Prop 64. Marijuana users may have felt like they struck Acapulco Gold, but a review of the law on drug testing in the workplace may turn out to be a buzzkill.
When can an employer drug
Continue Reading Marijuana at Work: Testing of (and for) Mary Jane