Uber drivers sue over ‘deactivations’, challenge California law

from Levi SumagasaiCalMatters

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Uber failed to create an appeals system to give drivers due process when they are kicked off the app, violating the California law it crafted that declares app-based drivers independent contractors, a lawsuit filed Monday alleged.

in 2020 voters approved Proposition 22a ballot initiative that exempted Uber and other app platforms from labor laws and allowed them to continue to classify their workers as contractors instead of employees. The measure included a promise that drivers would have an appeals process.

Rideshare Drivers United, a driver group that says it has about 20,000 members in California, said Monday that because Uber has violated Proposition 22 by not fulfilling all of its promises, it should not be allowed to continue to claim that its drivers are independent contractors.

“Uber has not met the conditions to take advantage of Prop. 22,” Shannon Lees-Riordan, a Massachusetts-based attorney who has challenged Uber and other gig companies for years and represents the California group, told CalMatters.

Many disabled drivers report that they find it difficult to appeal their cases. They say they are initially sent to sites where they appear to be talking to bots, then eventually reach agents who run from a script and appear to be in another country. They rarely reach people who are empowered to really help them.

Lees-Riordan said at a news conference in San Francisco that she wanted a declaration from the court saying the company was violating the law she wrote, which she said should help drivers who pursue individual arbitration in their cases.

“We will seek back wages and other damages if they have been unfairly disabled, and we will also seek their rights under the Labor Code,” she said.

Among the promises of Proposition 22: guaranteed minimum earnings of 120% of the minimum wage for active travel or delivery time; health care scholarships for those who qualify; occupational accident insurance and accidental death insurance; and “mandatory contractual rights and appeals processes,” according to the initiative’s text. The text does not specify what the requirements for the appeal procedure should be.

Devins Baker said he drove for Uber and Lyft in the Bay Area for eight years and was disabled by Uber just before Christmas in 2024.

He told CalMatters he believes Uber disabled him after he had to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting a man who shot across the freeway, sending his passenger — who wasn’t wearing a seat belt — out of his seat.

“I don’t know because we never find out which passenger complained,” Baker said, adding that he believes some people report drivers trying to get a free ride from Uber.

Baker became emotional during the press conference, saying he was trying to “keep things together” and struggling to find other ways to earn money to avoid homelessness.

Uber spokeswoman Ramona Prieto called Liss-Riordan an “opportunistic litigator” in an email to CalMatters and said the company “will fight this advertising stunt in court.” Prieto said the company provides drivers with a clear appeals process and pointed to a company blog post from last week that explained what drivers can expect when disputing deactivations.

“It turned my life upside down”

Another disabled Bay Area driver, Mirwais Noory, said Uber kicked him out of the app in November 2024 due to what the company said were safety concerns. He said he tried to show Uber dashcam video to plead his case, but to no avail.

Being disabled has caused financial hardship as he tries to support four children, he said. He has since found work as a security guard and now occasionally drives for Lyft.

“I’m the only one with an income,” Nouri told CalMatters. “It turned my life upside down.”

Jason Munderlow, president of the Bay Area chapter of Rideshare Drivers United, said at the news conference, “Once they’re disabled, there’s no unemployment insurance (because drivers aren’t considered employees). That leads to poverty and desperation.”

“The minute someone joins RDU, their first concern is pay and their second concern is being disabled,” Nicole Moore, president of Rideshare Drivers United, told CalMatters before the news conference.

Uber, a multibillion-dollar company headquartered in San Francisco, was the lead sponsor of the Prop campaign. 22 worth $205 million, which was also funded by DoorDash, Lyft, Instacart and Postmates. Uber spent a total of $59.5 million in cash and in-kind contributions, and Postmates — which Uber bought in a deal that closed in 2020 — spent $13.3 million.

The lawsuit, filed Monday in San Francisco Superior Court, is the latest in many legal challenges to Prop. 22 that CalMatters found there is no government agency designated to enforce it. The State Supreme Court confirmed the law on concert work in 2024

The plaintiffs also allege that Uber disabled drivers on grounds not specified in its “Platform Access Agreement” and that the company did not provide drivers with enough information about their earnings to determine that they were paid 120% of the minimum wage.

Uber is separate facing trial by the state Department of Justice and the cities of San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego over thousands of wage theft claims that predated Proposition 22. A trial in that case, as well as a similar one against Lyft, is scheduled for December 2027.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.