A Jersey City, New Jersey police officer was unlawfully fired over marijuana and must be reinstated with backpay, state officials said on Wednesday, adopting an administrative law judge’s earlier findings.
About two months after Gov. Phil Murphy (D) signed the state’s cannabis legalization bill into law in 2021, the Jersey City Police Department announced a policy barring officers from using marijuana on or off duty. Norhan Mansour was among four officers who were later fired for testing positive for THC and proceeded to file suit challenging the termination.
Mansour’s case has now been settled by the state’s Civil Service Commission (CSC), which agreed with Administrative Law Judge Kimberly Moss that the firing violated state law because the city was not able to establish that the officer used cannabis on the job or was impaired during shifts.
“What Jersey City is doing is equivalent to terminating police officers because they had a beer off duty,” Peter Paris, Mansour’s attorney, said, according to The Jersey City Times. “Except it’s worse because there is no constitutional right to drink beer, while there is a constitutional right in New Jersey to consume cannabis.”
The commission said that Jersey City’s argument that federal law preempts the state’s policy was “unpersuasive” and unsupported by the facts. It also said that the department’s claim that the federal ban on purchasing firearms for cannabis consumers does not apply to law enforcement, as officers do not fill out the federal form that inquires about marijuana use in order to obtain a gun.