The Senate Labor & Commerce Committee is opening the first week of session hearing bills enhancing employees’ access to employment records and preventing discrimination in hiring for cannabis use.

Personnel records: SB 5061, sponsored by Senator Patty Kuderer (D–Clyde Hill), requires employers to turn over a complete, unredacted copy of an employee’s personnel records at no cost upon request by the employee or their authorized representative within 14 days of receiving a request. While current law does require employers to provide personnel records on request, employers must only do so within a “reasonable period,” and only have to turn over files that are available locally. The bill does permit public employers to redact information in the personnel record as required by law.

As an enforcement mechanism, SB 5061 creates a private cause of action for an employee or former employee to enforce access to the records. It also establishes various statutory damages for certain violations, including: $250 for failure to provide records within 14 days of the records due date, $500 for failure to provide records within 28 days of the due date, and $1000 for failure to provide records more than 28 days after the due date.

Meeting these strict deadlines could be problematic for some cities if they are short-staffed and don’t have the capacity to provide a complete set of records within 14 days. As public employers, cities would also be obligated to review personnel records to ensure they don’t need to make legally required redactions before turning them over.

Cannabis use & hiring: SB 5123, sponsored by Senator Karen Keiser (D–Kent), prohibits employers from discriminating against a person in hiring for a person’s legal, off-the-job cannabis use, or for a person’s testing positive for cannabis in employer-required drug testing. Sen. Keiser offered a similar bill in the 2022 session.

The bill’s discrimination protections don’t apply to applicants for jobs in the building and construction trades, or positions that require federal background checks or security clearances. It also makes it clear that the bill only protects against discrimination for legal cannabis use, not for other non-cannabis drugs. The bill states it is not intended to interfere with an employer’s rights or obligations to maintain a drug- and alcohol-free workplace.

As we noted on the 2022 session’s version of this bill, most Washington cities receive various kinds of federal funding that could be imperiled if they could not follow federal drug laws in their employment practices. Unlike the 2022 bill, SB 5123 does not explicitly exempt employers that could lose federal funding or licensing or are otherwise required to follow federal drug laws.

Dates to remember

SB 5123 is scheduled for a public hearing in the Senate Labor & Commerce Committee on Tuesday, January 10 at 10:30 am.

SB 5061 is scheduled for a public hearing in the Senate Labor & Commerce Committee on Thursday, January 12 at 8 am.