New York’s Legal Activities Law, Labor Law §201-d, for many years has provided an unchanging array of protections from adverse action by employers against employees for engaging in “protected” conduct, i.e., legal recreational or political activities outside the workplace as well as being involved in union activity or consuming legal products. The passage this year of the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act, or MRTA, added an important new protection for employees’ off-duty activities—making marijuana use outside the workplace a protected activity—and thus expanded the reach of the Legal Activities Law. The MRTA is a sweeping statute dealing with many aspects of legalized cannabis in New York, including decriminalizing recreational use of marijuana.
The Legal Activities Law, which has counterparts in a number of other states, was passed in 1992 and took effect the following year. The statute prohibits employers from discharging, refusing to hire or otherwise discriminating against an employee because of that employee’s protected activities. Exceptions to the law’s protections are civil servants and journalists barred by law from political activity; off-duty conduct that may create a conflict of interest related to confidential information; and employee actions taken pursuant to obligations in a collective bargaining agreement or personal services contract.
