Legal News

Oregon High Court: Employer Free to Fire Medical Marijuana User

By Nathan Koppel

For supporters of legalizing of medical marijuana, yesterday was not a good day.

The Oregon Supreme Court ruled that a state worker who used pot to relieve pain and nausea could be fired for drug use even though he had had a state-issued medical marijuana card.

Oregon is one of a number of states that allows the use of pot for authorized medical reasons.

Here’s an article in The Oregonian on the ruling and here's the opinion.

The Oregon high court was asked to try to square the state's dope laws with federal employment law, which can require employers to make accommodations for workers with disabilities. In short, the court ruled that an employer's accommodation duties did not require it to tolerate medical marijuana use.

Business groups in the state hailed the decision.

The trade group Associated Oregon Industries told the Oregonian that the ruling “could not be better” for Oregon employers. Employers, the group said, should feel free to apply “zero-tolerance” drug policies and refuse to hire applicants who fail drug tests “regardless of medical marijuana registry status.”

The case involved the 2003 firing of Anthony Scevers, a drill press operator with Emerald Steel Fabricators of Eugene. According to court records, Scevers suffered from anxiety, panic attacks, nausea and vomiting and was granted a medical marijuana registry card in 2002, the Oregonian reports. He used pot one to three times a day, but not at work.

Scevers told an Emerald Steel supervisor that he was a medical marijuana user; a week later, he was fired.

Scevers filed a claim with the Bureau of Labor and Industries, which ruled that Scevers’s medical condition qualified as a disability under state law. It ordered the company to pay Scevers $45,000 in damages. The Oregon Court of Appeals upheld the labor bureau’s decision.

The Oregon Supreme Court, however, held that Scevers was not taking marijuana under the supervision of a licensed health care professional, as required by state law, and thus was engaged in the illegal use of drugs ─ a valid basis, according to the court, for Emerald Steel to fire him.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on April 16, 2010 (boomark / email).