A New Jersey worker formerly employed by a concrete company has won his case in federal court after being fired for testing positive for cannabis.
The case was County Concrete Corporation v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 863. It was argued in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey in Newark.
According to the court documents, an employee was working at the County Concrete Corporation in Kenvil in Roxbury in Morris County when the incident occurred. He left work to go on his lunch break. While doing so, he drove past a manager who uses medical cannabis himself and believed he smelled weed as the car passed.
When he returned from lunch, they made him take a drug test, which he failed.
However, the union and his lawyer argued he was not impaired. According to Beard Brothers Media, he was reinstated since he had “no slurred speech, no glassy eyes, no performance issues, and no observed impairment.”
The Teamsters Local 863 backed him in a process known as arbitration, which ultimately ruled in his favor. But the company appealed the decision in federal court in January 2026. The judge recently upheld the arbitrator’s decision. They usually do.
While he might have smelled of weed and it was found in his system, that doesn’t mean he was high at the time.
NJ Worker’s Right to Consume Cannabis
New Jersey’s legalization law, the Cannabis Regulatory and Enforcement and Marijuana Modernization Act (CREAMMA), established that workers could not be fired for solely getting high. However, the legal precedent needed to be established in courts to be respected, apparently. The matter unfortunately is complicated when one seems high at work versus having gotten high the night before and weed remaining in the system, as it does.
There is no cannabis equivalent of an alcohol breathalyzer test, which has been a recurring complaint of moderate politicians in Trenton.
Heady NJ has heard that increasingly, employers are respecting the right for their employees to consume responsibly after work. However, federal marijuana prohibition complicates matters for employers more connected to or regulated by the federal government.
