Hawaii Medical Marijuana Job Protections Died After a 6-0 Vote

Hawaii’s House Labor and Public Employment Committee voted 6-0 on January 28, 2025, for a medical marijuana workplace bill that never became law. House Bill 325 would have banned firing a registered patient for a cannabis card or a leftover metabolite, if the worker was not impaired on the job.

The draft still carved out drivers, caregivers, and anyone in physical control of the electric grid, the kind of utility workplace that had already ended one patient’s career. Legislative tracking records later listed the measure as sine die.

The 6-0 Vote and a Dead Bill

Eight lawmakers filed House Bill 325 as introduced on January 16, 2025, in the Thirty-Third Legislature. Twelve days later the House Labor and Public Employment Committee approved it without a dissent. That is the fact the first headlines carried, and it is still true.

A committee vote is not a statute. The bill never took effect. Trackers record it as sine die, the label for a measure that dies when a session ends without enactment. The medical cannabis chapter of the Hawaii Revised Statutes still has no hiring-and-firing clause.

THE 2025 FILE

• The vote: The House Labor and Public Employment Committee approved HB 325 by a 6-0 vote on January 28, 2025.
• The filing: Eight lawmakers introduced the bill on January 16, 2025.
• The end: Legislative tracking records list the measure as sine die after the 2025 session.
• The registry: Lawmakers cited Department of Health figures of 30,708 patients as of August 2024.

January posts treated that 6-0 as if the state had already closed the gap. It had not. The applause was for a step that the rest of the session did not finish.

House Bill 325 Targeted Metabolite Firings

The bill would have amended section 329-125.5 of the Hawaii Revised Statutes, the medical cannabis patient-and-caregiver shield that already covers schools, landlords, medical care, and custody. Employment was the missing piece, and the legislature said so in its own findings.

Though the medical use of cannabis has become increasingly accepted, qualifying patients risk losing their jobs because there are no clear protections against employment discrimination.

Hawaii House Bill 325, legislative findings, 2025

Those findings also cited 30,708 valid medical cannabis registrations as of August 2024. The proposed rule was narrow on purpose. An employer could not refuse to hire, fire, or change terms solely because a person held a registry card, or solely because a registered patient tested positive for cannabis components or metabolites, unless the patient was impaired during work hours or in a potentially dangerous occupation.

Bosses would have kept the right to discipline someone who used or possessed medical cannabis at work and was impaired. Collective bargaining language would have stayed untouched. If following the new rule would have cost an employer money or a license under a federal contract or federal law, the ban would not have applied.

In short, leftover THC in urine was the target, not a worker who showed up high. Metabolite tests can stay positive long after intoxication has passed, which is why a status-and-metabolite ban is the whole fight in states that have already legalized the medicine.

Which Jobs Would Still Have Been Unprotected?

The same draft that banned metabolite firings then listed the jobs that would not get the ban. Subsection (f) of the proposed amendment carved out public-safety work, care work, and a long tail of people who operate machines, the grid, or a motor vehicle.

JOBS LEFT OUT OF HB 325

• Public safety: Law enforcement officers, state correctional employees, firefighters, and civil defense emergency management personnel would have stayed outside the new hiring-and-firing ban.
• Water safety: Water safety officers, lifeguards, swimming instructors, and other state or county staff responsible for public safety at pools or beaches were exempt.
• Firearms: Anyone authorized to carry or use a firearm on the job would not have been covered.
• Emergency medicine: State and county emergency medical services personnel were exempt, as were employees who administer or may administer controlled substances or other drugs in hospitals, nursing homes, or emergency settings.
• Care work: Employees who work with children, the elderly, or other vulnerable populations were written out as a class.
• Heavy vehicles: Operators of combination or single vehicles at or above 26,001 pounds, and of vehicles designed for 16 or more passengers or required hazmat placards, were exempt.

The grid and the wheel: The list also reached employees in physical control of public utilities such as the electric grid or a water source, machinery or power equipment, or a motor vehicle.

That last bucket is where the 6-0 headline and the bill text part ways. A large share of Hawaii work involves a car, a van, a tour coach, a utility truck, or a shift with children or older patients. Fit-for-duty testing would have been allowed in potentially dangerous occupations, which gave employers another tool even where the new ban applied.

Scott Goold, a former Hawaiian Electric database analyst who has campaigned for the measure under the name Kokua Scott Goold Medical Cannabis Anti-Discrimination Act, later argued that the House draft still let firms treat the same desk job differently depending on the industry. He used a simple comparison: a customer-service worker might keep a job at a bank and lose the same work at the utility. The introduced text already exempted people in physical control of the electric grid. Either way, the shield was smaller than the vote made it sound.

Hawaiian Electric and the 2019 Firing

Goold says Hawaiian Electric Co. fired him on February 25, 2019, for legal, prescribed medical cannabis use, six years before HB 325 was filed. He describes himself as a former pro ballplayer and military veteran who moved into database work, including systems that served customers across Oahu, Maui, and the Big Island. He says he asked human resources about the company’s medical cannabis policy on February 14, 2019, before taking a drug test, and that nobody closed the question before he sat for it.

His manager, Lori Yafuso of the Hawaiian Electric IT department, had already praised him in writing as a great asset and said he had the greatest influence on the team’s success. After the firing, a coworker whose name Goold withheld put the impairment question in plain language.

I personally never saw any evidence of you being impaired. Quite the contrary in fact. I would say sharp, expedient, professional, technical, humble, the whole package really. But I did notice you had a limp, so I suspected you were in pain, but you never mentioned anything, and I never bothered to ask, our conversations were always about getting things done, and you delivered in times when we had to deliver and get things done.

Hawaiian Electric IT coworker, name withheld in Scott Goold’s account

Goold published that note, along with the manager’s praise, as part of a long campaign to change the statute. He says the dismissal cost him income and health coverage and had nothing to do with how he did the work. Hawaiian Electric’s substance-abuse policy, in his telling, treated a legal patient the same as an impaired worker because the test looked for metabolites, not on-the-clock intoxication.

That is the specimen HB 325 was built around, and it is also the specimen the exemption list puts back in play. A utility that runs the electric grid sits inside the “public utilities” carve-out. Anyone who drives on the job sits inside the motor-vehicle line. The bill would have helped some office patients at private firms. It would not have rewritten every drug-free policy in the islands, and it would not have reached several of the workplaces where a failed urine test still ends a career.

Schools and Landlords Already Face a Ban

Hawaii did not arrive at 2025 with a blank medical cannabis statute. Section 329-125.5 already says a school shall not refuse to enroll, and a landlord shall not refuse to lease, solely because someone is a qualifying patient or primary caregiver, unless following that rule would cost a federal monetary or licensing benefit. Patients have to show a registry card or certificate and photo identification.

The same section already treats compliant medical cannabis as the equivalent of other physician-directed medication for medical care. Custody, visitation, and parenting time cannot be denied solely for conduct the medical cannabis part allows, unless that conduct created a danger to a minor. What the section still does not do is tell an employer it cannot fire a registered patient for the card, or for a metabolite result, when the worker was not impaired on the job.

WHAT 329-125.5 DOES AND WHAT HB 325 WOULD HAVE ADDED

That table is the quiet core of the 2025 fight. Lawmakers were not being asked to invent patient rights from nothing. They were being asked to extend a shield they had already written for classrooms and rentals into the one place most adults actually meet the state: work.

24 States Wrote the Job Shield Hawaii Did Not

HB 325’s findings put Hawaii in a minority among medical-cannabis states. The legislature wrote that 38 states, three territories, and the District of Columbia had comprehensive medical programs, and that only 24 states had enacted some form of medical cannabis anti-discrimination employment law. Hawaii, which legalized medical use in 2000, was counting itself among the states that still lacked a clear job rule.

The same findings blamed the clash between state medical law and federal prohibition for employer confusion. Courts, the bill said, have consistently sided with employers when patients challenge drug-free workplace policies, without fully closing the door on a state statute that might protect patients. Without explicit language, lawmakers argued, judges would not have a clean way to balance a patient’s job against a firm’s safety claims.

In the same 2025 session, written testimony told committees that medical cannabis patients still needed statutory employment protections for patients. That plea sat beside a House Labor vote that looked, for one afternoon, like the answer. The answer never left the building as an Act.

Federal rules still sit over parts of the local labor market. A contractor who would lose federal money or a federal license by ignoring a drug-free mandate would have been excused even if HB 325 had passed. Commercial drivers and other federally regulated seats were already in the exemption list. The state bill was never going to overrule Washington. It was trying to tell Hawaii employers what to do when Washington was not in the room, and it did not finish that sentence.

Watching the Same Bill Die Again

The 2025 file was not Hawaii’s first attempt to put a job rule next to the 2000 medical law. Licensed dispensaries did not open until 2015, 15 years after legalization. Employment language lagged further. The Drug Policy Forum of Hawaii was already urging passage of Senate Bill 2543 in February 2020, noting that other states had already written patient job protections. In 2021 the same group asked why Hawaii still had none, while pointing to Senate Bill 64, a Roz Baker measure Goold has also used as a documentary record. In 2023, Senate Bill 669 on the same theme did not get a hearing, according to contemporaneous posts from people tracking the file.

HOW THE JOB GAP STAYED OPEN

1. 2000: Hawaii legalizes medical cannabis, 25 years before HB 325 is filed.
2. 2015: Licensed dispensaries begin operating under the state program.
3. February 25, 2019: Scott Goold is fired by Hawaiian Electric, in his account, for prescribed medical cannabis use.
4. 2020: Senate Bill 2543 is pushed as an employment-protection measure for patients.
5. 2021: Senate Bill 64 again tests job-protection language and does not become the missing clause.
6. 2023: Senate Bill 669, another employment-protection draft, fails to receive a hearing.
7. January 16, 2025: Eight lawmakers file House Bill 325.
8. January 28, 2025: The House Labor and Public Employment Committee approves it 6-0.
9. End of the 2025 session: The bill is recorded as sine die and never takes effect.

By May 13, 2025, Goold was still asking lawmakers to pass the Kokua Act and still citing more than 30,000 local patients. That date is the simplest proof the 6-0 vote had not become a governor’s signature. The registry figure the legislature used, 30,708 as of August 2024, is the one that belongs on the page. The larger point does not depend on rounding. A quarter-century after the state licensed the medicine, it still had not licensed the job.

House Bill 325 is a closed 2025 file. Section 329-125.5 still reads as a school, housing, medical-care, and custody shield. It still does not tell an employer to ignore a registry card or a metabolite result when the worker is not impaired on the clock.

Frequently Asked Questions

Did Hawaii House Bill 325 Become Law?

No. Legislative tracking records list it as sine die, and it never took effect. The bill’s last section said the Act would have taken effect upon approval, so a late-session enactment would have applied immediately rather than on a delayed start date.

Would HB 325 Have Covered Out-of-State Medical Cannabis Patients?

The amended statute would have applied to qualifying out-of-state patients and their caregivers if they were validly registered with the Hawaii Department of Health, the same registration gate that already applies to the school and housing rules in section 329-125.5.

Could an Employer Still Have Sent a Medical Cannabis Patient for a Medical Evaluation?

Yes. The draft said nothing in the new hiring-and-firing ban would abridge an employer’s existing right to send an employee for medical evaluation when the employer has safety concerns about impairment, and bosses could still discipline someone who used or possessed medical cannabis at work and was impaired.

What Happens if a Worker Is Hurt on the Job and Cannabis Impairment Is Blamed?

HB 325 would have given employers a liability shield when a worker is injured or killed and the employee’s impairment by medical cannabis was the sole contributing factor. That clause sat in its own subsection, separate from the discrimination ban.

Does Hawaii Law Treat Medical Cannabis Like Other Medication for Organ Transplants?

Yes. Existing section 329-125.5 already says a registered patient’s compliant cannabis use shall be considered the equivalent of any other medication under a physician’s direction and shall not constitute illicit-substance use or otherwise disqualify the patient from medical care, including organ transplants.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of Hawaii House Bill 325 and existing medical cannabis patient rules. It is for information only and is not legal advice, an employment-law opinion, or a recommendation about drug testing, workplace discipline, or whether any person should disclose patient status to an employer. Readers who need advice about a hiring decision, a failed test, or a firing should consult a licensed Hawaii employment attorney or a qualified labor-and-employment counsel before acting. Figures, bill status, and statutory language reflect the legislative text and sources used for this report and can change if the legislature amends chapter 329 or a later bill becomes law.