Pot smokers can be fired - even in Colorado. A court ruled Thursday that pot smokers who test positive for marijuana use can be fired by their employers.

The Colorado Court of Appeals found there is no job protection for pot smokers, since marijuana is banned by the feds. Even people who smoke medical marijuana are not exempt. Medical and recreational marijuana are both legal in Colorado, but employers can fire users lawfully.

"For an activity to be lawful in Colorado, it must be permitted by, and not contrary to, both state and federal law," the appeals court stated in its 2-1 conclusion.

Buisnesses are trying to regulate marijuana distribution, and employers want to regulate use of marijuana among their workers in states where pot is legal, like Colorado and Washington. However, laws vary in different states across the country and state-federal conflict has left the issue murky.  In Arizona, for example, employees can't be fired for using medical marijuana, unless it would jeopardize an employer's federal licensing or contracts.

In the Colorado case that ruled employees could be fired for smoking pot, Brandon Coats, 33, a telephone operator for Englewood, Colo.-based Dish Network LLC was involved in a suit. Coats has been a medical marijuana patient in Colorado since 2009 due to paralysis from a car crash as a teenager.

He was fired in 2010 for failing a company drug test, but bosses didn't say it affected his job performance..

 "(W)hile we agree that the general purpose of (the worker protection law) ... is to keep an employer's proverbial nose out of an employee's off-site off-hours business ... we can find no legislative intent to extend employment protections to those engaged in activities that violate federal law," Judge Janice Davidson wrote. 

Coats' attorney, Michael Evans, says they plan to appeal. "This case not only impacts Mr. Coats, but also some 127,816 medical marijuana patient-employees in Colorado who could be summarily terminated even if they are in legal compliance with Colorado state law," Evans wrote in a statement.

In order to get his job back, Coats sued his former employers; a trial court dismissed his case in 2011. The judge in that case concurred with Dish Network, Coats' employers, ruling that medical marijuana use isn't a "lawful activity" covered by a state law. The law in question was  intended to protect things like cigarette smokers from being fired for legal behavior while not at work.

In the current case, one justice dissented because he couldn't find an example of whether state judges should consider federal law while determining the connotations of a Colorado statute.

Coats told reporters that he had obtained a prescription for medical marijuana due to debilitating muscle spasms that would otherwise prevent him from working, and that he has been looking for a new job since being fired.

"I'm not going to get better anytime soon," Coats told reporters. "I need the marijuana, and I don't want to go the rest of my life without holding a job."