Seyfarth Shaw LLP | www.seyfarth.com Litigating CA Wage & Hour Class and PAGA Actions (23rd Edition) 25 has a significant, impermissible effect on motor carriers’ “prices, routes, and services” that runs afoul of the FAAAA.120 Shortly thereafter, the State appealed and the Ninth Circuit reversed in California Trucking Ass’n v. Bonta. The Ninth Circuit held that AB 5 had only a tenuous, remote, or peripheral connection to rates, routes, or services and thus was not preempted by FAAAA as applied to motor carriers.121 The Bonta court found that “AB-5 is a generally applicable labor law that impacts the relationship between a motor carrier and its workforce, and does not bind, compel, or otherwise freeze into place a particular price, route, or service of a motor carrier at the level of its customers, it is not preempted by the [FAAAA].”122 As a result, the State of California was not enjoined from enforcing AB 5 “against motor carriers operating in California.”123 The California Trucker’s Association then petitioned the United States Supreme court for certiorari, but the petition was denied.124 E. California Voters Adopt Proposition 22 The California Attorney General, in People v. Uber Technologies, Inc.,125 sued ride-share companies for a preliminary injunction against the classification of drivers as independent contractors. The trial court granted the requested relief, finding the State had shown a reasonable probability—indeed, “an overwhelming likelihood”—of prevailing on the merits of the claim that the ride-share companies were misclassifying drivers as independent contractors in violation of AB 5.126 In 2020, the Court of Appeal affirmed, holding that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in granting the preliminary injunction. The trial court had focused on the companies’ inability to meet Prong B of the ABC test: whether their drivers perform work outside the usual course of defendants’ businesses.127 The trial court found that despite attempts to characterize the drivers as the ride-share companies’ “customers,” for whom the ride-share companies provide the service of matching drivers with passengers, the State’s eventual success on the merits was almost “inevitable.”128 The trial court acted within its discretion in concluding that rectifying the various forms of irreparable harm shown by the State would more strongly serve the public interest than protecting the ride-share companies, their shareholders, and all those who had come to rely on the advantages of online ride-sharing delivered by a business model that does not provide employment benefits to drivers.129 120 Becerra, 433 F. Supp. 3d at 1166. 121 996 F.3d 644, 658-661 (9th Cir. 2021). 122 Id. at 664. 123 Id. 124 California Trucking Ass'n, Inc. v. Bonta, 142 S. Ct. 2903 (2022). 125 56 Cal. App. 5th 266 (2020). 126 Id. at 281. 127 Id. at 319. 128 Id. at 301. 129 Id. at 328.
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