Battle over Prop. 22 continues
Opponents of Proposition 22, the controversial initiative that classified gig drivers as independent contractors rather than employees, have asked the the California Supreme Court to find the policy unconstitutional.
An appeals court ruled in March that Prop. 22 could stand as state law — a significant win in March for California’s ride-hailing and food delivery industry.
Attorneys representing the Service Employees International Union California, along with a group of union-supported drivers, filed the petition for review on Friday.
They argue that because the California constitution requires the Legislature to enforce a “complete” workers compensation program, carving out independent contractors violates that constitutional mandate. If the Prop. 22 proponents wanted to change employment benefits law, they would’ve needed to do so through a constitutional amendment, the opponents say.
They hope the California Supreme Court agrees. But first, it needs to decide whether to review the case — a choice that could take months.
“You have a number of factors that are pointing in favor of the court taking review,” said Stacey Leyton, legal counsel for the plaintiffs. “This was a major statewide initiative, and it’s really important for the California Supreme Court to resolve whether it was valid or not.”
Supporters of Prop. 22, known as the Protect Appbased Drivers and Services (PADS) Coalition, say that the Supreme Court has previously settled the question of whether voters can enact policies through ballot initiatives that the state constitution reserves for “the Legislature.”
“This case is about the voters’ initiative power. Did the voters have the constitutional authority to enact Prop. 22 in the first instance?” said Kurt Oneto, legal counsel for PADS. “You can find cases that are a century old and you can find cases from the last few years where the California Supreme Court has held that the power of the Legislature and the power of the voters is co-equal.”
An appeal to the Supreme Court adds months — and potentially years, if the court accepts the case — to the already drawn-out battle over gig worker classification.
The saga began with a 2018 California Supreme Court decision that made it more difficult for companies to hire workers as independent contractors rather than employees. The court’s unanimous embrace of the “ABC test” abandoned three decades of legal precedent and led to a slew of criticism from the business world.
In an effort to codify the court’s ruling and provide some clarity, the Legislature passed Assembly Bill 5 a year later. The bill broadly redefined an employee as a worker who performs duties that are central to a company’s business. Gig companies lobbied hard against the bill and responded to its passage with Prop. 22.
Voters approved the initiative in November 2020 after businesses like Uber and Lyft poured more than $200 million, a record-setting amount, into the campaign and threatened to cut services in the state. The measure exempted appbased gig workers, such as drivers for DoorDash and InstaCart, from state laws that required businesses to hire more workers as employees rather than independent contractors.
The following year, workers supported by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) sued the state twice — once in the Supreme Court and once in Alameda County Superior Court — on grounds that the proposition unconstitutionally prevented the state from overseeing the worker’s compensation system.
Ride-hailing drivers, backed by SEIU, sued the state in early 2021 arguing that the initiative violated the state constitution by infringing on the Legislature’s authority to enact a worker’s compensation program and by requiring a majority to amend the law — a nearly impossible threshold to achieve. An Alameda County Superior Court judge agreed with the workers and ruled in August 2021 that the law was unenforceable and unconstitutional.