A California appeals court overturned most of a ruling invalidating Proposition 22, the voter-passed gig economy law of 2020 that allows transportation and delivery giants to classify their workers as independent contractors rather than employees.
The first district appeals court on Proposition 22 should remain standing, dissenting from the 2021 ruling that central provisions of the law conflict with the state constitution, rendering the law unenforceable, and setting it aside entirely.
However, the Court of Appeal overturned a provision in the law restricting some legislative amendments.
The court found that the ballot procedure had incorrectly determined what constituted an amendment, in violation of the separation of powers principles of the state constitution. The Court struck down provisions of Proposition 22 that constrained the legislature to make future amendments to the law.
the lower court ruling, Introduced by Alameda County Superior Court Judge Frank Roach in August 2021, it found that the law contravened the state constitution by restricting the legislature’s ability to regulate workers’ compensation rules. The ruling also argues that Proposition 22 violates a constitutional provision that requires initiatives to be limited to “a single topic.”
Proposition 22 remained in effect through the appeals process.
The Protect app-based Drivers and Services Coalition, which supported Proposition 22, celebrated the ruling as “a historic victory for the nearly 1.4 million drivers who rely on the independence and flexibility of app-based work to earn income and for the integrity of the California initiative system.”
“The Court of Appeal upheld the underlying policy behind this action,” Molly Weeden, a spokeswoman for the coalition, said in an email.
A three-judge panel in San Francisco heard the case in December. During the hearing, Judge Tracy L. Brown in the provision in the law limiting legislative amendments to collective bargaining as outside the scope of the stated purpose of Proposition 22 and put forward the hypothetical idea of repealing a single provision rather than the entire law.
Proposition 22 went into effect at the start of 2021. Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart and other app-based companies have spent more than $200 million marketing the ballot initiative to Californians as a boon to workers and customers alike.
For hundreds of thousands of drivers, Proposition 22 It maintained the flexible schedules associated with remaining an independent contractor but removed protections afforded by the 2019 law, AB 5, which required temporary workers in many industries to be classified as employees with stronger benefits such as minimum wage, overtime and workers’ compensation in the event of injury.
“Devoted student. Bacon advocate. Beer scholar. Troublemaker. Falls down a lot. Typical coffee enthusiast.”