California employers ought to take steps now to make sure their insurance policies and practices are aligned with the brand new employment protections for hashish use. Particularly, employers within the state at the moment are prohibited from discriminating towards staff who check constructive for hashish in sure forms of drug screens and from asking job candidates or present staff about their hashish use off-duty. What do it’s essential to know to adjust to the brand new guidelines? Right here's a breakdown of the necessities and a three-step compliance information.
What’s California Discrimination Legislation?
Below California's Truthful Employment and Housing Act (FEHA), it’s unlawful for an employer to discriminate towards job candidates and staff primarily based on a protected class. In different phrases, employers are prohibited from taking an adversarial employment motion – comparable to refusing to rent, demoting, or terminating the worker – primarily based on a protected attribute, comparable to intercourse, race, faith , medical situation or incapacity.
Till 2022, FEHA didn’t present protections for hashish customers – however that modified when AB 2188 and SB 700 went into impact on January 1, 2024.
What has modified?
The California Legislature lately enacted two new legal guidelines amending FEHA and defend hashish customers from employment discrimination in sure circumstances. Key provisions embody the next:
- Safety for off-duty use: AB 2188 prohibits discrimination primarily based on the usage of hashish exterior the office. Extra particularly, the invoice created a brand new class protected beneath FEHA for people who interact within the off-site, off-duty use of medical marijuana.
- Limits to drug testing: AB 2188 additionally prohibits employers from utilizing the outcomes of hair or urine checks for marijuana — which might detect traces of hashish for days or perhaps weeks — in selections to rent, hearth, or penalize staff. staff Below the brand new necessities, employers might want to undertake testing procedures that search for lively impairment/THC and discontinue testing for non-psychoactive hashish metabolites that don’t point out impairment. AB 2188 doesn’t stop employers from utilizing different checks to detect impairment, comparable to saliva or blood checks.
- Drug-free workplaces allowed: Necessary, AB 2188 it doesn’t have an effect on employers' rights to keep up a drug-free office. Staff or job candidates who’re beneath the affect, actively impaired, or convey hashish to work can also be denied employment alternatives, disciplined, or terminated on this foundation.
- Exceptions could apply: There are exceptions to AB 2188's employment protections for staff within the constructing and building business and for job candidates and staff in positions that require a federal background investigation or a safety clearance.
- Limitations on background screening: SB 700 clarifies AB 2188 by amending FEHA to forestall employers from asking job candidates about their previous use of hashish. Moreover, employers could not discriminate towards an applicant after they discover details about previous hashish use associated to an applicant's felony historical past, except in any other case permitted by legislation.
What must you do? A 3-Step Information for Employers
- Replace Insurance policies: Overview your present insurance policies on drug and alcohol use to make sure compliance with AB 2188. Anti-discrimination insurance policies and drug use insurance policies should adjust to the brand new protections relating to the usage of hashish earlier than . Insurance policies ought to distinguish between off-the-job hashish use versus on-the-job incapacity, and you need to think about specifying which testing procedures shall be used.
- Overview of check procedures: Make any needed modifications to make sure that check procedures are compliant. When you depend on drug screens to establish hashish use, you need to assessment the way you conduct screenings and use checks that differentiate between an worker who’s presently beneath the affect of hashish versus one who beforehand used hashish.
- Overview of latest hiring paperwork: Overview your functions and new rent paperwork to make sure that nothing in these supplies requires impermissible details about a job applicant's earlier use of hashish.
A model of this text was initially revealed by Impropriety.
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