California court lets gig companies keep treating workers as contractors

But the ruling could still hand a significant victory to unions and worker advocates. It invalidated a provision of Prop 22 that sets a high bar for the Legislature to pass laws allowing workers to organize.

“We are grateful that the California Court of Appeal has affirmed that companies like Uber, Lyft, Doordash and Instacart can’t keep drivers from joining together in a union through their deceptive ballot measure,” plaintiff and driver Mike Robinson said in a statement.

The legal battle has extended a long-running fight over the status of gig workers in California. In 2019, the state passed a law that made effectively compelled companies to classify their workers as employees, not contractors, by enshrining a California Supreme Court Decision.

After failing to block the law in Sacramento, tech companies fought back at the ballot box by pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into passing Prop 22. A labor-backed coalition then challenged the law as unconstitutional.