Medical Marijuana Update

California medical marijuana patients get more protections, so do District of Columbia city employees, and more.

California Governor Signs Bill Protecting Medical Marijuana Patients from Healthcare Discrimination. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has signed into law Assembly Bill 1954, barring doctors from discriminating against patients based on a positive test for THC if the patient is a registered medical marijuana user. The bill adds that healthcare professionals cannot be punished for treating a patient who uses medical marijuana in compliance with state law. He also signed into law Senate Bill 988, which amends an existing law that permits registered patients to use medical marijuana products at hospitals. It would repeal a provision that currently requires that "health care facilities permitting patient use of medical cannabis comply with other drug and medication requirements."

Nebraska

Federal Appeals Court Rejects Attempt by Medical Marijuana Campaign to Block Nebraska Ballot Process. As medical marijuana campaigners ran into problems with signature gathering earlier this summer, they sued, arguing that the state's requirement that initiative campaigns not only reach a certain statew0ide signature threshold but also get signatures from at least 5 percent of voters in at least 38 of the state's 93 counties violated free speech and equal protection rights. Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana and the ACLU prevailed in district court in June, winning a temporary injunction suspending the 5 percent requirement. But state officials appealed, and the US 8th Circuit quickly put a hold on the judge's order pending an appeals court ruling. That ruling came Wednesday, when a split panel of the court ruled for the state. "The district court abused its discretion by granting the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction,” Judges Raymond Gruender and David Stras ruled. Judge Jane Kelly disagreed, writing that "if the right to vote is fundamental, I see no reason why it should not apply equally to the initiative process at the heart of Nebraska’s electoral and legislative system." The campaign and the ACLU said the effort would continue and that they may seek a ruling from the full 8th Circuit.

Washington, DC

DC Court Reverses Firing of Government Worker Who Tested Positive for Marijuana. An administrative court in the DC Office of Employee Appeals (OEA) has reversed the firing of medical marijuana patient and city government employee who was accused of being high on the job and later tested positive for marijuana. The employee argued that the city's communications office falsely accused her of being impaired because her eyes were red and she was talking quietly. She pointed out that her eyes were red because she had spent the previous night at a hospital sitting beside a relative who had overdosed. She also presented a valid medical marijuana patient card. The court held that the communications office was negligent in how it handled the process for reasonable suspicion of impairment from drugs. The judge noted that supervisors allowed her to continue working after they accused her of being impaired: "Because Employee was allowed to perform her duties and did in fact adequately do so after being observed by her supervisors, I find that [the supervisors] did not reasonably believe that Employee’s ability to perform her job was impaired. As such, I further conclude that a reasonable suspicion referral was unwarranted," the judge wrote in the ruling.