While the U.S. Supreme Court has made a number of headlines this term, flying under the radar was its refusal to consider whether California’s controversial worker classification law should be blocked by a federal law that...more
In the latest chapter of the independent contractor or employee saga in California, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in California Trucking Ass’n v. Bonta, ruled that federal law doesn’t preempt AB 5, the...more
As we have written here, the day before California’s controversial AB 5 was set to go into effect, U.S. District Court Judge Roger Benitez issued a temporary restraining order to block enforcement of the law as to...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: A federal court has granted a preliminary injunction blocking the State of California from enforcing AB 5 against motor carriers. The court provided a fulsome analysis demonstrating that the Federal...more
As we recently wrote here, just hours before California’s controversial AB 5 went into effect, a federal court in San Diego issued a temporary restraining order (“TRO”) to enjoin enforcement of the independent contractor...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: On the heels of last week’s federal court order temporarily blocking enforcement of AB 5 by the State of California, a California state court in Los Angeles reached the same conclusion, finding the Federal...more
Following the challenges to AB 5, California’s controversial new independent contractor law, can be a difficult endeavor. Every day seems to bring a new development....more
Wednesday, January 8th, saw a state court conclude that California’s controversial new misclassification law doesn’t apply to truck drivers, the second time in the last few weeks that a judge has come down hard on AB-5 for...more
California Assembly Bill 5 (AB-5), a law aimed at classifying most workers as employees rather than independent contractors, went into effect Jan. 1, 2020. However, the day before the law took effect, U.S. District Judge...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: Effective January 1, 2020, AB 5 implements the mandatory “ABC” test for determining whether a person is an independent contractor or employee under California law. Specific to motor carriers, AB 5 presumes...more
A federal judge took a pause from his New Year’s Eve revelries to hand a big victory to California truckers, blocking the state’s new misclassification law from impacting them before the January 1 effective date arrived....more
As businesses throughout the State of California continue to grapple with the potential implications of AB5, a new law designed to make it more difficult for companies to treat workers as independent contractors, the...more
We’re now just a few weeks away from the nation’s most stringent independent contractor misclassification law taking effect in California. But if a group of truck drivers have their way, the law will stall out before it ever...more
Frank Sinatra certainly was not thinking about freight brokers when singing this Grammy-winning song back in 1966. However, the title of the song definitely resonates for freight brokers in 2018. In addition to capitalizing...more
A critical but unresolved issue for the motor carrier industry is the continuing viability of the independent contractor truck driver model, which is under siege by state and federal regulatory agencies as well as private...more
On July 8, 2015, a federal district court judge held that a section of the Massachusetts Independent Contractor law, as applied to same-day delivery services, is preempted by the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization...more