The Law Before The Amendments
The New Jersey Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act, first adopted in 2009, was purposely drafted to omit specific employment protections. Instead, the law as originally adopted was primarily designed to decriminalize medical marijuana use in New Jersey. In fact, the law expressly provided that it did not require an employer “to accommodate the medical use of marijuana in any workplace.”
As a practical matter, however, even before the recent amendments, New Jersey employees had already gained protections through the state court system via the state’s Law Against Discrimination (LAD). On March 27, 2019, a New Jersey appellate court issued a decision that permitted an employee fired after testing positive for marijuana – which he had been using off duty to treat the pain caused by cancer – to sue under a disability discrimination theory. The court’s ruling, in Wild v. Carriage Funeral Holdings, Inc., said that “the Compassionate Use Act’s refusal to require an employment accommodation for a medical marijuana user does not mean that the Compassionate Use Act has immunized employers from obligations already imposed elsewhere.” Therefore, the court concluded, “the Compassionate Use Act does not immunize what the LAD prohibits.”
The Amended Law
The law as amended has been renamed the Jake Honig Compassionate Use Medical Cannabis Act, in honor of a seven-year old New Jersey boy who died of brain cancer. It contains several new protections for employees, while also providing two important pieces of good news for employers.