The City Council moved Tuesday to bar most businesses, nonprofits and agencies from screening job applicants for marijuana use.

The measure, sponsored by newly-minted Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, includes carve-outs for cops, construction workers, commercial drivers and individuals in the health and child care industries—as well as those mandated to drug-test employees because of federal contracts. But it broadly prohibits other organizations from obligating potential employees to undergo a test for tetrahydrocannabinols, the chief psychoactive compounds in marijuana.

In a statement to the press, Williams said that the legislation would benefit businesses by broadening the field of potential hires.

"We need to be creating more access points for employment, not [fewer]," Williams said in a release. "It makes absolutely no sense that we're keeping people from finding jobs or advancing their careers because of marijuana use."

At a press conference before the vote, Council Speaker Corey Johnson noted that Gov. Andrew Cuomo pledged to institute a licensing and regulatory infrastructure this year for the adult use and sale of recreational marijuana.

"We are on the verge, I believe, of legalizing marijuana in New York state, hopefully," Johnson said. "We shouldn't be testing people for it, with very limited exceptions."

The council paired the measure with a proposal from Queens Councilman Donovan Richards to forbid the Department of Probation from testing probationers for marijuana use except in special cases. Richards highlighted a history of disproportionate enforcement of prohibition rules on communities of color like his own.

"I am privileged to be here at 36 years old, but a lot of the 36-year-olds I grew up with have been locked out of mainstream America and living in a permanent under-caste system," he said at the press conference. "They cannot get a job, housing or access to higher education, all because of trap doors like the one we are closing today."

Unlike cocaine and opioids, which are flushed from the body in a matter of days after use, marijuana can be detected weeks later, which increases the number of positive test results.