The Supreme Court won’t consider a challenge by Cal Cartage Transportation Express, a trucking company, to California’s unusually restrictive worker-classification law that virtually outlaws independent contracting.
Independent truckers say the California law known as AB5, which took effect Jan. 1, 2020, will kill their industry by preventing companies from hiring them. The statute, which was pushed by organized labor to crack down on the hard-to-unionize so-called gig economy represented by companies such as Uber and Lyft, was enacted ostensibly to help workers by preventing their “misclassification.” The law is unpopular in California’s business community.
Representatives of the association didn’t respond by press time to a request for comment regarding its reaction to the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear the Cal Cartage case.
The Supreme Court’s decision not to take up the case comes weeks after a California voter-approved referendum limiting the reach of AB5 was invalidated by a state judge.
The decision by the Supreme Court to turn away the petition for certiorari, or review, came in an unsigned order on Oct. 4. As is the high court’s custom, it didn’t provide a reason for its decision.
The case is Cal Cartage Transportation Express LLC v. California. The appeal, which challenges a ruling from the Court of Appeal of California, Second Appellate District, was docketed by the Supreme Court on April 16.
The Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act of 1994 was created to prevent states from undermining federal deregulation of the trucking industry by imposing regulations of their own, the petition stated.
“Congress had grown concerned with the dizzying patchwork of state laws that motor carriers had to contend with—including laws that discouraged the use of independent contractor truck drivers, who form the backbone of the trucking industry nationwide— and decided that the solution was to broadly preempt all state laws ’related to a price, route, or service of any motor carrier,'” the petition reads.
This language prevents states from substituting their own regulatory judgment for free market forces and lets motor carriers engage in uniform business practices across the country.
“California, on the other hand—like several other States, including Massachusetts and Illinois—has sought to force motor carriers to cease contracting with independent owner-operator truck drivers, preferring instead an employee model in which truck drivers are wage laborers rather than entrepreneurs,“ the petition reads. ”These states have enacted a so-called ‘ABC test’ for worker classification, declaring workers to be employees unless they are in a different line of business from the companies that hire them—a requirement that can never be met when a motor carrier hires a truck driver.”
The office of California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.