Can your Mississippi employer fire you for a failed drug test, even if you’re prescribed medical cannabis?
When legislators drafted the Mississippi Medical Cannabis Act, they were detailed in what the law would and would not legalize.
One such example is the attention paid to employer and employee rights.
Here’s what to know.
Is your employer, health insurer, Medicaid or Medicare required to cover the costs associated with using medical marijuana?
No, according to the Medical Cannabis Act, health insurers and employers are not required to cover any of the medical, pharmaceutical or health care services associated with medical marijuana.
Does an employer have to make accommodations for an employee prescribed marijuana?
According to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, reasonable accommodations for disabled employees are usually required for any employer with 15 or more employees.
Reasonable accommodations would include “any modification or adjustment to a job or the work environment” that would allow a disabled employee the rights and privileges of employees who are not disabled, according to the Job Accommodation Network.
However, reasonable accommodations do not refer to the use of medical marijuana.
The disability or ailment that qualified you for medical marijuana might require accommodations, but the use of medical marijuana in and of itself is not accommodated.
According to Mississippi’s Medical Marijuana Act, employers are not required to “permit, accommodate, or allow the medical use of medical cannabis, or to modify any job or working conditions of any employee who engages in the medical use of medical cannabis or who for any reason seeks to engage in the medical use of medical cannabis.”
Can your employer discipline or fire you if you fail a drug test, even with a registry card?
Leafly’s Amelia Williams reported at least 14 states prohibit employers from drug testing for marijuana.
You are not in one of them.
Mississippi is a fire “at will” state, according to the Mississippi Department of Employment Security.
Employers can fire employees without cause or reason, as long as it is not discriminatory. So, if you insist your employer is discriminating against you for using medical marijuana (for instance, calling you derogatory names or treating you differently when compared to the rest of the staff), you might have a case.
The Medical Marijuana Act would provide no support for a wrongful termination claim. The law clearly states it does not permit or establish an employee’s right to take legal action against an employer.
Moreover, the law says its purpose is not to “prohibit any employer from refusing to hire, discharging, disciplining, or otherwise taking an adverse employment action against an individual with respect to hiring, discharging, tenure, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment as a result, in whole or in part, of that individual’s medical use of medical cannabis.”
The law also specifically addresses drug-testing policies, stating employers are allowed to conduct and enforce any policy they have in place.
This story was originally published March 10, 2023 at 10:30 AM.
