Update Applicable to:
All employers in the state of California.
What happened?
On August 11, 2022, the California State Assembly voted to pass Assembly Bill 2188 (AB 2188), which, if passed by the Senate and signed into law by the governor, would grant protections to employees and job applicants who use marijuana.
What are the details?
AB 2188 offers employees and applicants protection from being penalized by their employer for off-the-clock cannabis use. This bill would amend California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act (“DFEH”), which prohibits various forms of employment discrimination, by making it an unlawful employment practice for an employer to discriminate against a person in hiring, terminating, and any term or condition of employment based on cannabis use outside of work hours and away from the workplace. If an employer violated the bill, an employee could file a DFEH charge and a civil lawsuit with the same remedies as any other California discrimination claim.
While this bill protects employees, it still allows employers to maintain drug-free work environments and does not permit “an employee to possess, to be impaired by, or to use, cannabis on the job.” So, while employees can use cannabis in their free time, they cannot bring the cannabis to the work site or arrive to work under the influence.
According to the Department of Defense, the bill would not apply to employees in “building and construction trades,” nor would the prohibition apply to employees or applicants in positions requiring a federal government background check or security clearance. This bill would also not pre-empt any federal or state laws that require testing for controlled substances and would not apply to employment decisions based on “scientifically valid” pre-employment drug test methods “that do not screen for psychoactive cannabis metabolites.”
The bill was passed by the State Assembly by a 42-23 margin and is currently sitting with the California Senate. If this bill is passed by the Senate and signed by Governor Newsom in its current form, it will allow an extra year for implementation and go into effect in January 2024.
For more information, please see the links below:
What do employers need to do?
Employers should review the links above and look for this bill to be signed into law. Vensure will continue to monitor this law and update once more news has been received.
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