The state's highest court will weigh the case of Sacramento resident Gary Ross, an approved medical-marijuana user who was fired from his job at an IT firm after failing a pre-employment drug test.

Ross injured his back in the Air Force and began using medical marijuana in 1999 with his doctor's consent. He was fired from Ragingwire Telecommunications in 2001, just days after starting work, because of the drug-test results.

A three-member panel of the state Court of Appeal ruled in September that the employer did not illegally discriminate against Ross. "An employer need not accommodate a disability by allowing an employee to use illegal drugs,'' wrote presiding Justice Arthur Scotland, who noted that federal law still outlaws marijuana. He also said that if such discrimination was prohibited then employers might be forced to allow medical-marijuana users to bring their drugs to work.

But Ross' lawyer, Stewart Katz, said, "It's not an employer's job to do an independent assessment of whether you're potentially violating some federal statute. We're seeking enforcement of a California law in a California court."

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