About 10 years ago three employees were fired from a Utah office for violating a no-gun company policy held by AOL. In violation of company policy, they had kept guns in their cars, parked in the company parking lot. They were captured on security video transferring guns from one trunk to another to carpooling to go shooting either after work or during lunch, I forget.
The employees sued and lost their case since nothing in State or federal law prohibited a company from having a "no gun" policy that extended to the interior of employees' cars in the company parking lot.
What is interesting is that when I started working fresh out of college about 20 years ago, my employer had no policy on guns at all. About 2 years later, they suddenly had a no gun policy that extended into the parking lot. My HR director at the time denied any desire to ban guns from cars, just that week he and several other employees had gone shooting at lunch in preparation for one of the events in an annual "Corporate Games" held among companies in SLC. The intent was just to keep guns out of the office. But the language was clear. And it was never changed.
My theory is that most companies large enough to have a dedicated HR department belong to an HR association to keep them abreast of the newest employment laws. Most of these associations ultimately are associated with a couple of large HR specialist law firms in big, liberal cities. These firms promulgate model language for employment policies that are in harmony with applicable laws. There is a natural, anti-RKBA bias in these kinds of firms located in big, liberal cities. Plus, there is a twisted kind of cost-benefit that makes sense. If an employee is injured or killed in a criminal act at work, Workers' Comp laws limit the liability of the company so long as they have adopted reasonable policies and have proper training. Currently, banning all guns is seen as the legally safe thing to do.
Anyway, in response to the AOL incident, gun activists in Utah pressed our legislature to pass
"Parking Lot Preemption" (URS 34-45-1xx) in 2009/ With rare exception, this law protects the right of employees to keep a gun and/or religious material (religious material was added primarily to make the bill harder to argue against, nobody was getting fired for having a Bible or religious tracts in their cars so far as I know) in their car in the company parking lot without fear of negative employment action. It bans employment policies that prohibit legally possessed guns or religious material in private cars in company parking lots. Notably, the law doesn't fully address the AOL incident since to have protections the firearm must be out of sight (not in plain view from outside the vehicle). The gun has to remain in the vehicle. So a company in Utah can ban transferring guns from one car to another, but cannot ban having guns in the car. We sometimes drive out onto the public street to move guns from car to car, then drive back into the company parking lot to park.
In exchange the law provides some liability protections to employers.
If you read the code, notice that while it provides exemptions to schools and other government employers, most of these employers are already subject to Utah's preemption law.
Nothing prevents the company from searching your car, but when they find the legally stored gun rather than their missing power tools, there is nothing they can legally do about the gun there.
The only really effective exemption is for religious employers, and a few employers with security requirements who provide secure parking lots and storage, or non-secure lots where guns are permitted in the car.
Ideally, I believe gun owners/carriers would enjoy the same anti-discrimination protections as afforded to race, gender, sexual orientation/identity, religious and political affiliation, and disability. But this was a step in the right direction and allows employees to defend themselves while commuting or running errands before, after, or during the work day.
Charles