In the final hearing of a years-long lawsuit, judges at the California Supreme Court grilled lawyers from both sides on the question of whether Proposition 22 violates the California Constitution.
Proposition 22 classifies app-based workers as independent contractors, a status that has been criticized by advocates as depriving workers of employee benefits. It was approved in 2020 with 59 percent of the vote, following more than $200 million in donations from gig companies such as DoorDash, Uber, Lyft, and Instacart.
The crux of the argument hangs on whether Proposition 22 usurps the legislature’s authority to establish and enforce a workers’-compensation system. If so, it’s a violation of the California Constitution.
The immediate ramifications, however, were unclear.
“The court asked tough questions of all sides, and did not indicate how they intend to rule … nothing was surprising that the justices asked, but they were clearly struggling,” said Stacey Leyton, an attorney with Altshuler Berzon, a law firm representing the workers who are challenging the ballot measure.
As the seven-judge panel engaged in a lively argument with the attorneys, more than 100 Uber, Lyft drivers and DoorDash workers rallied in front of the court in San Francisco.
“We’re very excited because, if it were to be overturned, we will fall squarely under California labor law,” said Nicole Moore, president of drivers’ rights advocacy group Rideshare Drivers United.
Attorney Scott Kronland, who represents the workers, argued that Proposition 22 conflicts with the California Constitution by preventing the legislature from providing complete workers’ compensation protections to app-based drivers.
Justice Goodwin Liu asked a question that was “sort of surprising,” said Stacey Leyton, an attorney with Altshuler Berzon, a law firm representing the workers who are challenging the ballot measure.
“You’re aware there are other statutes that the legislature has passed that have offered essentially employee benefits to some independent contractors. And could it not do that again here?” Liu asked.
The judge was suggesting that “maybe Proposition 22 would not prevent the legislature from putting app-based drivers back into the workers’ compensation system and still calling them independent contractors,” explained Leyton.
Most of the exchange in the courtroom centered around initiative power versus legislative power.
Jeffrey Fisher, a lawyer representing Proposition 22 proponents, argued that the law is not unconstitutional. “The legislature could have passed Proposition 22. Therefore, so could the people,” he said.
He was greeted by Justice Leondra Kruger’s question about the logical extensions of his argument. “Could the voters, by initiative, eliminate workers’ compensation altogether and thus foreclose the legislature from coming back and reenacting some or all of the current workers’ compensation system?” she asked.
Justice Joshua Groban underscored that line of questioning. “Could the people, by initiative, just abolish workers’ compensation altogether?” he asked.
The verdict on whether Proposition 22 will remain the law of the land is expected in 60 to 90 days, according to Kronland.
“We were very happy that the California Supreme Court decided to take the case. They didn’t have to,” said Leyton, whose team filed the lawsuit against Prop. 22 three and a half years ago. “This is what we have been waiting for since Proposition 22 was adopted … our hope is that they recognize that the proposition violates the California Constitution and that they will strike it down.”
In August 2021, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Frank Roesch ruled Proposition 22 both “unconstitutional” and “unenforceable,” which was reversed last year by a state appellate court in San Francisco. During the years-long legal process, Prop. 22 remains the law of the land.
For their part, Uber, Lyft, and Doordash all issued statements today calling for the court to uphold Proposition 22, arguing that the voters had spoken.
For Veena Dubal, a professor at the University of California, Irvine School of Law and coauthor of an amicus brief supporting the workers who are challenging the law, the question before the judges today was far narrower than the actual issue the gig model embeds.
“Unfortunately, that’s a political question and not a legal one,” said Dubal. “What is at stake is labor rights, but also the ability of corporations in the future to just literally buy laws that legalize their business models at the expense of taxpayers and at the expense of workers,” she said.
A study published yesterday by the University of California, Berkeley Labor Center delved into what it called a false promise laid out to voters by proponents of Proposition 22 in 2020. Despite claims that drivers would earn at least 120 percent of local minimum wages, after expenses, a majority of drivers earned less than the minimum wage, according to the study co-authored by the Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics that analyzed the data of 52,370 trips by 1,088 drivers from six platforms in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago and Boston metro areas.
Furthermore, the study found out that in California, the median hourly employee-equivalent wage, which takes into account the value of mandated employee benefits, of gig passenger drivers equaled $5.97 without tips and $7.63 with tips.
“Drivers have never been at a worse place. It’s just so hard right now. So many of the rides that are offered to us would cost us more to complete them than we would earn,” said Moore. “It’s my hope that … the judge makes a good decision, because we can’t live in a state where companies purchase laws to make them exempt from basic working standards, which is what this has done.”
“I very much worry that what these companies are pushing is a Silicon Valley vision of life in which rules and regulations are antiquated,” said Katie Wells, researcher at Georgetown University and author of book “Disrupting D.C.: The Rise of Uber and the Fall of the City.”
She cited the fight between gig workers and app-based companies that are taking place in Minnesota, Seattle, and other cities around the world. “The way in which this era had given corporate influence, such free reign, is really tied to the question at the hearing today,” she said.
In the years after Proposition 22 was passed in California, the gig model has been similarly grim for gig workers around the world. “I would love to see research showing that it has improved the lives of workers,” she said. “But I have yet to see that.”
Independent- app based work Has helped millions of people it’s good for full-time and part-time and for the part-time it’s used as a steppingstone into other careers and if you wish to stay with it full-time, there’s plenty of money. I never wanna see work into some union that wouldn’t make any sense and there’s no freedom in that.
The Silence of the Waymos,
Sounds like an Anthony Hopkins horror movie and it actually is in a way.
I a Triple Bay over 14th Street a Valencia and the Waymo garage is a few blocks down and their cabs come under my window all day and they drive better than people and I’m a pedestrian at the intersection and the Waymos are much more courteous than human drivers.
You know what else Waymos don’t do ?
Eat, sleep, crap, complain or get paid.
AI is here and SSA should be extended in a UBI kinda way to take in all of the jobs lost to it and cabbies get first dibs.
h.