Judge Rebukes Arizona Walmart for Firing Employee With Medical-Marijuana Card

JOSEPH FLAHERTY | FEBRUARY 13, 2019 | 7:00AM

An Arizona Walmart location terminated an employee in 2016 who held a valid medical-marijuana card after a drug test came back positive.

But now a federal judge has ruled that because Walmart could not prove the employee was impaired at work, the company violated the nondiscrimination provision in the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act.

In a significant decision that recognized a private right of action for employment discrimination under the AMMA, Arizona U.S. District Judge James A. Teilborg said last week that Walmart was not justified in firing the worker based on the company's idea that marijuana metabolites in her urine meant she must have been impaired at work.

Whitmire's attorney Joshua Carden, who runs a Scottsdale-based law firm, said Teilborg's decision is "the first of its kind in Arizona."

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