A California state senator has introduced a bill this week to prohibit an employer from firing a worker who legally smokes marijuana while not at work. California's current laws allow legal use of marijuana for medical purposes.

Democratic State Senator Mark Leno, who represents a district that includes Marin County, parts of Sonoma County and parts of San Francisco, proposed the bill, which would also prohibit an employer from using the same fact of legal marijuana use not to hire a job applicant.

In 2007, Sen. Leno had proposed a bill similar to this one. The legislature at that time passed the bill, but then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill. According to Leno, the bill establishes a right to work for a person who makes proper legal use of marijuana, and he is surprised that anyone may object to that fact.

In 1996, a ballot measure was approved by the residents of California to legalize the medical use of marijuana for those people who qualify. But, in 2008, the California Supreme Court ruled that there was nothing in that measure or the subsequent medical marijuana laws that would stop employers from firing a user of medical marijuana because of a positive test for marijuana. In other words, a worker who legally used pot could be fired for testing positive for pot. Leno says that California voters never meant for the medical marijuana measure to apply just to the unemployed.

Within Leno's new bill, safety-sensitive jobs are exempted from this employer prohibition. Nurses, doctors, heavy equipment operators and school bus drivers are examples of those who perform jobs that are safety-sensitive and whose job performance could be adversely affected by impairment of any kind.

According to the bill, an employer could still fire an employee who used marijuana during work hours or at work, or who was at work under the influence of marijuana.

The California Chamber of Commerce has opposed the bill proposed by Sen. Leno in 2007, but a Chamber spokeswoman said that the current bill had not been examined by the Chamber yet. The Chamber opposed last year's Proposition 19, a statewide ballot measure to legalize recreational marijuana use, partially in the belief that the measure would prohibit employers from firing a worker who was smoking pot at work or who was under the influence of pot while at work. The supporters of Proposition 19 denied that claim.