Norhan Mansour was fired well after Gov. Phil Murphy signed a bill to legalize adult-use cannabis in New Jersey in 2021 (with sales beginning in April 2022). After the bill was signed, the Jersey City Police Department clarified that although cannabis was legal, police officers were prohibited from consuming cannabis when off the clock. Mansour was one of four officers who were terminated due to a positive THC test in June 2022, all of whom pursued a lawsuit in April 2023.
Mansour’s attorney Peter Paris explained the hypocrisy of his firing. “What Jersey City is doing is equivalent to terminating police officers because they had a beer off duty,” Paris said in June. “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.”
According to a Jersey City Times report from June, the case was settled by the New Jersey Civil Service Commission. In favor of reinstating Mansour, Judge Kimberly Moss said that state law “…precludes employers from terminating an employee simply because the employee uses cannabis and precludes employers from terminating their employees solely due to the presence of cannabinoid metabolites in the employee’s system,” Moss said.