Smoking Blues

An article in today’s Washington Post reminds us of the place to which tobacco and smoking have fallen.  Although there continue to be smoking rights proponents who advocate civil disobedience, a growing number of municipalities and states are enacting laws that ban smoking in all indoor public places and other enclosed areas.  Employers must, of course, comply with any such laws, and generally speaking, employers have the right to control smoking in the workplace in accordance with written policies.

There’s a caveat for employers, however, depending on the state or states in which you do business.  A few state have laws that protect employees who smoke from adverse employer action based on the fact the employees smoke.  What this ordinarily means is that while an employer can ban smoking in the workplace (and may be required to ban smoking in the workplace as a result of the laws mentioned above), no adverse action can be taken against an employee because he/she smokes away from work and complies with smoking laws and/or policies while at work.  Laws like this are found in New Jersey, New Mexico, Tennessee and Virginia.  There could be other states that also have some variation of this kind of law.