The Florida Second District Court of Appeal has reversed a lower court ruling that required Hillsborough County to accommodate a firefighter-paramedic’s off-duty use of medical marijuana. The case was brought by Firefighter-Paramedic Angelo Giambrone, who was placed on unpaid administrative leave following a random drug test in 2019.

Giambrone had a valid Florida medical marijuana card, and there was no evidence that he used or possessed marijuana at work, on county property, or during working hours. There were also no performance evaluations, complaints, or other records suggesting that he had been impaired while working.

After he was placed on leave, Giambrone filed suit alleging disability discrimination under the Florida Civil Rights Act, wrongful termination, failure to update the county’s drug-free workplace policy, and breach of contract.

In December 2024, the Hillsborough County Circuit Court granted summary judgment in his favor. The court concluded that medical marijuana qualified as prescription or nonprescription medication under the collective bargaining agreement and that the county was required to treat the positive test as negative.

The trial court also ruled that Florida’s medical marijuana laws required the county to accommodate off-duty use when there was no evidence of use, possession, or impairment at work. It awarded Giambrone back pay and compensatory damages. It also prohibited the county from discriminating against other employees who presented valid medical marijuana cards following positive tests under similar circumstances. The county appealed.

The Second District Court of Appeals concluded that the trial court’s ruling was inconsistent with the language of the collective bargaining agreement, the county’s drug-free workplace policy, and Florida’s medical marijuana laws.

The collective bargaining agreement prohibited employees from using drugs “at any time while employed by Hillsborough County Fire Rescue, other than alcohol or prescribed medications.” It defined impairment to include a confirmed positive drug test and required an employee with a first confirmed positive test to obtain a negative return-to-work test before resuming duty.

The agreement defined prescription medication by reference to Florida’s controlled-substance statutes. The appeals court concluded that medical marijuana did not fall within that definition because it is authorized through a physician certification and dispensed by a licensed medical marijuana treatment center, rather than prescribed and dispensed by a pharmacist.

The court explained:

• [E]ven if a medical marijuana authorization card resembles a prescription in function or appearance, it is not a “prescription” as the CBA defines that term.
• Medical marijuana is not authorized for “general distribution and use without a prescription” under federal law; to the contrary, federal law wholly prohibits such conduct with respect to marijuana.
• Nor is medical marijuana authorized pursuant to Florida law for “general distribution and use without a prescription”; it is dispensed through a patient-specific regime limited to “medical use by a qualified patient.”
• A category limited to medications authorized “for general distribution and use without a prescription” cannot be read as a catchall for any medication that is lawful or available in Florida. That interpretation would deprive the limiting phrase “for general distribution and use without a prescription” of any work to do—effectively rewriting the second clause into “any medication authorized under state law”—and would largely collapse the CBA’s two-part definition by making the separate “prescription as defined by s[ection] 893.02” prong unnecessary in practice.
• In sum, the trial court’s conclusion that the County was contractually obligated to treat a positive test as negative rests on a premise that is wholly unsupported and is in fact contradicted by the CBA’s text. Judgment cannot be sustained on a judicial rewriting of unambiguous definitions.

The court emphasized that its ruling was limited to the interaction between Florida’s medical marijuana laws, Hillsborough County’s drug-free workplace policy, and the specific collective bargaining agreement governing Hillsborough County firefighters.

The court also addressed a federal rule that took effect while the appeal was pending and moved certain marijuana products and state-authorized medical marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III. It concluded that the change did not affect the case because medical marijuana remained subject to a restricted regulatory system rather than general nonprescription distribution. In addition, the dispute was governed by the law in effect when Firefighter-Paramedic Giambrone tested positive in 2019.

The Second District reversed the judgment on all four counts, vacated the countywide accommodation requirement, and directed the trial court to enter summary judgment for Hillsborough County.