As voters weigh Prop 22, a California appeals court upheld a lower court ruling ordering Uber and Lyft to stop classifying drivers as independent contractors
OAKLAND, Calif.—A California state appellate court on Thursday upheld a lower court's ruling that there was an “overwhelming likelihood” …
Context & Ripple Effects
The reclassification fight has been running all summer: a lower-court order demanded Uber and Lyft treat California drivers as employees, then an appeals court issued a stay that averted an expected statewide shutdown while the case proceeded. This week's appellate ruling removes the last procedural shield short of the state Supreme Court.
What makes the timing decisive is the ballot: voters are deciding Prop 22 at this exact moment, which would carve app-based drivers out of employee classification by statute. A yes vote would supersede the court order entirely — which is why the companies have been fighting on both tracks at once.
First-order effects
- Uber and Lyft are under a standing court order to stop classifying California drivers as independent contractors, with the earlier injunction no longer protecting them from immediate compliance.
- Hundreds of thousands of California rideshare drivers' employment status — and access to benefits like minimum wage guarantees — now hinges on whether the ruling takes effect or is overtaken by the Prop 22 result.
Second-order effects
- Prop 22 becomes the deciding variable: a pass renders the court order moot, while a failure forces Uber and Lyft into costly reclassification, restructuring, or service pullbacks in their largest US market.
- DoorDash and other gig platforms that rely on the same contractor model face the same binary, turning a two-company court loss into an industry-wide compliance question overnight.
Third-order effects
- The litigation did not end here — a later superior court ruling found Prop 22 itself unconstitutional, before an appeals court reversed that decision and the state Supreme Court ultimately upheld Prop 22, keeping the contractor model intact. The pattern shows gig-work classification being settled through ballot measures and years of appellate combat rather than ordinary labor-law enforcement.
- For other states eyeing similar reclassification laws, California's sequence demonstrates that statutory carve-outs backed by voter approval can outlast adverse court rulings — raising the stakes of every future gig-economy ballot fight.
The trend: Gig-economy employment classification is being decided less by labor regulators or courts than by platform-funded ballot measures that can survive years of judicial challenge.