SACRAMENTO — California may be moving aggressively to enforce AB 5 with new lawsuits against Uber and Lyft, but the state’s top prosecutor likely won’t be prioritizing going after cam platforms and their gig-working performers, according to an industry attorney.
On Tuesday, California’s attorney general, along with the city attorneys of San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego, sued the ride-hailing companies, saying they had misclassified their drivers as independent contractors, depriving them of workplace protections, all the while giving the companies an unfair competitive advantage.
Karen Tynan, a lawyer with Ogletree Deakins, told AVN that word around the state's capital has it that the only targeted industry for AB 5 litigation is ride-sharing.
“In all, I don’t see the attorney general and others suing any cam performers or people in adult entertainment,” Tynan said. “However, I do see Employment Development Department audits of companies happening when companies pay performers as independent contractors.”
Tynan said that any AB 5 “clean-up legislation that was kicking around Sacramento for this legislative session is certainly not a priority right now.”
“The priority in Sacramento is bills related to COVID-19, bills about the wildfires and bills addressing homelessness,” she said.
Under AB 5, contract workers are guaranteed minimum and overtime wages, workers’ comp and other benefits that regular employees receive.
The state attorney general’s suit filed today maintains that Uber and Lyft enjoy “illegitimate savings” from the benefits they do not provide the drivers and this allows them to provide “services at an artificially low cost, decimating competitors and generating billions of dollars in private investor wealth off the backs of vulnerable drivers.”
The lawsuit, filed in San Francisco Superior Court, seeks hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid wages for drivers and civil penalties up to $2,500 for each violation of California’s Unfair Competition Law and Business and Professions law, as well as an injunction to permanently bar Uber and Lyft from misclassifying drivers.
Uber, in a statement, vowed a donnybrook in its defense of the suit filed against the company and Lyft.
“At a time when California’s economy is in crisis with 4 million people out of work, we need to make it easier, not harder, for people to quickly start earning,” Uber said in a release. “We will contest this action in court, while at the same time pushing to raise the standard of independent work for drivers in California, including with guaranteed minimum earnings and new benefits.”
