The Brief

Nearly four years after California voters approved better wages and health benefits for ride-hailing drivers and delivery workers, no one is actually ensuring they are provided, according to state agencies, interviews with workers and a review of wage claims filed with the state.

Voters mandated the benefits in November 2020 when they approved Proposition 22. The ballot initiative was backed by gig-work companies that wanted to keep their workers classified as independent contractors and were resisting a 2019 state law that would have considered them employees. Prop. 22 stipulated that gig workers would remain independent contractors but be treated better.

The state Industrial Relations Department, which handles wage claims, now tells CalMatters it does not have jurisdiction to resolve those related to Prop. 22, citing a July 25 California Supreme Court ruling that upheld the law and therefore maintains that gig workers are not employees. That effectively passes enforcement responsibility on to the state attorney general, whose office was noncommittal when asked about its plans, saying that it does not adjudicate individual claims but does prosecute companies that systematically violate the law.

The lack of enforcement leaves in limbo workers who in many cases have already been waiting for months or years for the state to resolve their complaints. Workers have filed 54 claims related to Prop. 22 since it went into effect in December 2020. At least 32 of them are unresolved, state records obtained by CalMatters show, although at least two of those are due to workers not following through.

Of the unresolved claims, one goes back to 2021, several are from 2022 and 2023, and about half are from this year, through May.

Emails included with the claims show that the Industrial Relations Department told one worker it was severely understaffed, and seven others, starting in 2022, that it did not have jurisdiction to help them since they were independent contractors rather than employees.

Although the number of claims filed with the state represent just a fraction of the more than 1 million gig workers in California, they give a glimpse into what happens when workers turn to the state for help instead of the companies that backed Prop. 22.

What gig workers are complaining about 

Workers say in the claims, and in interviews with CalMatters, that companies such as Uber, Lyft and Instacart failed to provide higher wages and health care stipends under the law, and that the companies’ representatives sometimes act confused or take a long time to handle their requests for Prop. 22 benefits. The gig companies have touted the law as something that has boosted pay and benefits, and have said it has helped gig workers hang on to work they can do whenever they want.

Laura Robinson is among the workers who have had to aggressively pursue what they believe they’re owed under the law. For the past year, she has filed claims with the state and fought two different gig-work companies for different benefits promised under Prop. 22.

She was making a delivery for Instacart a year ago, she said, when a driver making a U-turn hit her, totaling her car. Now, she said, she has lingering back pain, and has only been able to make a total of a few deliveries over the past several months.

Robinson, who lives in Irvine, tried to get Instacart to retroactively provide her with occupational accident insurance as required under Prop. 22.

When she first contacted Instacart about the collision, “four or five different (representatives) told me on chat ‘we don’t provide insurance,’ but I told them this is California,” Robinson said. “Finally someone said ‘oh yeah, I know what you’re talking about.’ ” Robinson had some difficulties documenting the accident, because, she said, the responding Torrance Police Department officer rode away on his motorcycle without writing a report. But after about seven months, she finally heard back from Zurich, Instacart’s insurance provider. She received a lump sum, and monthly payments for the time that she has been largely unable to work, according to bank statements and emails from Zurich to her, which she shared with CalMatters.

Instacart spokesperson Charlotte Healow said all the company’s shopper support agents should know about “shopper injury protection” and that there is information in the app about how to go about filing claims. But Robinson showed CalMatters several screenshots of her chats with support agents who either thought she was asking about health insurance or who told her someone would email her back about her situation — which eventually happened, though it took a few tries.

Robinson said she had also struggled to get a smaller gig platform, food delivery app Curri, to comply with the law. Under Prop. 22, ride-hailing and delivery gig companies are supposed to pay her 120% of minimum wage for the time she spends driving, making up for any shortfall in the pay she receives, but Curri had not done so, she said. Not knowing where to turn, she asked a few different state agencies for help, including the attorney general’s office. She even lodged a complaint with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s National Consumer Complaint Database. After several months, the Industrial Relations Department scheduled a hearing for her case for Aug. 29. Last week, the department told her the company decided to settle and pay her what it owed, according to emails and a release she signed that she shared with CalMatters. Curri’s marketing director referred CalMatters to the company’s legal department, which did not return three emailed requests for comment.

Robinson saw the upside of Prop. 22 after it passed. She liked being able to continue setting her own hours and saw a bump in her earnings delivering for Grubhub due to the law. But she is now frustrated about how tough it was to figure out who’s supposed to be upholding it.

“It’s not helpful if it’s not enforced or applied,” she said.

Robinson said the deputy labor commissioner she was in touch with throughout the process of pursuing her claim against Curri told her last week that because Prop. 22 was upheld by the state Supreme Court — effectively ensuring gig workers cannot be considered employees — the department would no longer be handling similar cases because it does not have jurisdiction over independent contractors.

What do gig workers want?

The Prop. 22-related wage claims reviewed by CalMatters were part of a larger set of nearly 200 claims that gig workers filed with the Industrial Relations Department since the law took effect in December 2020. Citing the California Public Records Act, CalMatters sought all wage claims in that timeframe involving gig companies, but the state did not provide any claims against DoorDash, which is one of the biggest of the app-based gig companies. A department spokesperson could not explain why.

Most of the claimants sought delayed or unpaid wages, including adjustments owed under Prop. 22. Others sought health care stipends required under the gig-work law, and one driver said he sought occupational accident insurance but did not receive it.

The claims also shed light on the mechanics of how app companies are allegedly withholding wages. In them, some gig workers claimed that they were deactivated — kicked off or fired by the app — before receiving all their wages.

The records also indicate the state had trouble holding app companies to account in a timely fashion. In emails about the claims, some workers frequently asked for updates about their cases and complained about limited communications from the state. This prompted one supervisor in the Industrial Relations Department’s San Francisco office to respond by email on May 30, 2024, seemingly noting that gig workers’ complaints were just a fraction of the array of worker complaints the state fields: “I am working with 40% staff shortage. There are over 3,000 cases, most of which are older than yours, and only seven people (total) to handle them.” The department did not respond to requests for comment on whether this shortfall persists.

Monetary wage claims ranged from about $2 to nearly $420,000. Most — 54% — were against ride-hailing and delivery giant Uber and 25% were against its rides competitor Lyft. There were 17 claims against grocery-delivery app maker Instacart, seven against food-delivery platform Grubhub, four against Target-owned delivery service Shipt and three against UPS-owned delivery service Roadie.

The Industrial Relations Department has long tried to resolve gig workers’ wage disputes. The labor commissioner, who heads the department’s Labor Standards Enforcement Division, still has pending wage-theft lawsuits against Uber and Lyft that it filed in 2020 on behalf of about 5,000 workers with wage claims going back to 2017.

Those cases predate Prop. 22, originating during a period when gig workers were misclassified and should have been considered employees under California law, the labor commissioner argues in the wage-theft suits. After Prop. 22 passed, opponents challenged it and the case ended up before the California Supreme Court, which upheld the law in July, effectively affirming that drivers are independent contractors, not employees. A department spokesperson, Peter Melton, said the ruling means the department can no longer handle claims about missing wage adjustments under the earnings guarantee, unpaid health care stipends or other aspects of the law.

Department representatives made similar statements to workers even before Prop. 22 was upheld, the claims records show. An email response, dated March 26, 2024, from the department to an Uber driver stated: “The Division of Labor Standards Enforcement enforces employment law. We cannot enforce Prop 22 earnings because they aren’t ‘wages’ earned by ‘employees’.”

This echoes the position lawyers for Uber and Lyft took in some of the records when responding to wage claims. They asked the state to dismiss such claims, writing in one email: “As of December 16, 2020, drivers using Lyft’s platform are considered independent contractors by statute and, thus, cannot seek relief under the Labor Code.”

Now that the department has disavowed responsibility for Prop. 22 claims, the question remains: Who will enforce the law?

Scott Kronland, the attorney for Service Employees International Union California who unsuccessfully argued before the state Supreme Court that it should throw out Prop. 22, told CalMatters: “I’ve also heard from drivers that they’re not getting the things they’re promised by Prop. 22.”

Kronland said their recourse, after the ruling, is to press local prosecutors or the attorney general, who have the ability to hold companies liable for unlawful business practices under the state’s Unfair Competition Law. Still, he said “enforcement is something the Legislature could clarify.”

In an unsigned email response to CalMatters’ questions after the state Supreme Court decision, including whether it planned to pursue Prop.-22-related cases against gig-work companies, the attorney general’s office said gig workers can submit complaints at oag.ca.gov/report. The email added: “Although the Attorney General does not represent individual workers or adjudicate individual complaints by holding administrative hearings like (the Department of Industrial Relations), DOJ brings lawsuits to hold accountable companies that systematically break the law, for example through widespread violations of wage and hour standards. Reports or complaints of employer misconduct are an important part of our work.”

When CalMatters previously asked the attorney general’s office for copies of any wage complaints it had received from gig workers thus far, a spokesperson responded that the office was representing the state in its effort to defend Prop. 22 before the California Supreme Court — and referred CalMatters back to the Industrial Relations Department.

What gig companies share about Prop. 22’s impact

Gig companies have said that, due in part to the initiative’s earnings guarantee, workers now make more than $30 an hour. But a May study by the UC Berkeley Labor Center found that, for California ride-hailing drivers, average earnings after expenses, not including tips, is about $7.12 an hour, and for delivery workers, $5.93. With tips, drivers’ average hourly earnings are $9.09 an hour, and $13.62 for delivery workers, the study found.

To better understand the impact of Prop. 22, CalMatters asked each of the four largest gig companies — Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and Instacart — the following:

• How much they have spent on delivering on each of Prop. 22’s four main promises:
  
  • 120% of minimum wage earnings guarantee
  • Health care stipends
  • Occupational accident insurance 
  • Accidental death insurance
• How many gig workers have received each of the promised benefits. 
• Whether they have passed on costs to consumers, and if so, where they account for those customer fees in their public financial filings. 
• How they handle complaints or issues related to their promises.

Lyft said 85% of California Lyft drivers who have driven for the company since Prop. 22 went into effect have received at least one wage “top up” — the additional money drivers receive under the earnings guarantee — through the end of the fourth quarter of 2023, though spokesperson Shadawn Reddick-Smith would not provide specific numbers of Lyft drivers in the state. None of the other companies would give any information on their delivery of the wage guarantee.

Instacart spokesperson Healow said the company has paid out about $40 million in health care subsidies to its delivery workers, which she said number in the tens of thousands in the state. She also said about 11% of California shoppers have become eligible for a health care stipend since Prop. 22 took effect, and that 28% of those eligible shoppers have redeemed their subsidy.

To qualify for the health care stipends, workers must work at least 15 hours a week each quarter, and be enrolled in health insurance that is not provided by an employer or the government. Because the gig companies won’t share how many workers have received the stipends, CalMatters asked the state health insurance exchange, Covered California, if it had data that might help shed some light. Seven percent of the 1.6 million people who used Covered California reported doing gig work in a 2023 survey, said a spokesperson for the exchange, Jagdip Dhillon.

DoorDash spokesperson Parker Dorrough said that just 11% of eligible couriers used the health care stipend in the fourth quarter of 2023 but that 80% of DoorDash’s delivery workers had health care coverage through another source, such as their full-time job or spouse.

None of the other companies would give any information on their delivery of the stipend. Lyft’s Reddick-Smith said 80% of California Lyft drivers already have health care coverage, including 13% who bought their own coverage (this second group is the set of drivers who qualified for the stipend).

None of the four companies provided the numbers of workers who have used occupational accident or accidental death insurance.

None of the companies would disclose how they account for the fees they charge customers for Prop. 22 expenses, nor are the fees included in their publicly available financial filings. Instacart said it does not charge customers for expenses associated with Prop. 22. Lyft said its per-ride service fee includes a 75-cent “California Driver Benefits Fee.” Uber charges customers a “CA Driver Benefits” fee for each ride and delivery in the state and spokesperson Zahid Arab said the company has “invested more than we collected in fees.”

Uber published a blog post after CalMatters’ questions, saying it has “invested” more than $1 billion in Prop. 22 benefits. Arab would not break down these benefits further.

As for complaints related to the promises, each of the companies said workers should contact support agents, whom they can usually get in touch with in the app; an Instacart spokesperson said workers can make some claims directly in the company’s app.

Accounting and enforcement

Ride-hailing driver Sergio Avedian last year helped raise public awareness of the lack of Prop. 22 enforcement. Specifically, he homed in on one narrow issue: Under the law, gig-work companies were supposed to adjust for inflation each year the reimbursement they pay to drivers for mileage. Avedian said no such adjustment had taken place for two consecutive years. And as a podcaster and contributor to the Rideshare Guy, a popular gig-work blog, he had a high profile. Avedian and a fellow eagle-eyed driver started pestering the state’s treasurer’s office, which had not published the adjusted rates as stipulated under Prop 22. The office eventually did so and, the Los Angeles Times reported, put the state’s gig workers on track to get back pay for the mileage expenses — pay potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Now, a year later, Avedian is curious about gig-company math again. He has asked Uber some of the same questions CalMatters did — including how the company accounts for the driver-benefits fee it adds on to each ride or delivery. The company’s response to him was similar — it provided few specifics.

Besides his concern about the issue as a driver, Avedian said “as a consumer who is paying into the Prop. 22 fund on every trip or delivery, I would like to know the accounting of where my money is going.”

When the gig companies were campaigning for Prop. 22, they implored voters to “help create a better path forward for drivers.”

But Avedian and other gig workers in California say their paths have not changed much. Many still complain about low wages, little transparency from the companies and lack of worker protections.

Yasha Timenovich said he has worked as a ride-hailing driver for a decade, first with Uber, now with Lyft.

“I work 12, 13, 14 hours a day,” said Timenovich, who drives in the Los Angeles area. “But the time I sit and wait at LAX is not accounted for.” He said he has to work long hours to try to make sure he has enough earnings. “We’re not completely independent contractors. We’re not employees. We’re sort of a hybrid model of theirs. We’re pretty much nobody.”

He also said he must obtain health insurance through Medi-Cal, California’s health care coverage for low-income residents — which in turn means he doesn’t qualify for the health care stipend. He said every driver he knows “is on Medi-Cal because they can’t afford health insurance. I don’t know anyone who has (the stipend).”

Many drivers voted for Prop. 22, he said. But “what we were told was a lie.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom has proposed record levels of public funding for K-12 schools, but in several Southern California school districts declining enrollment and rising costs may still lead to cuts next school year.

The budget proposal allocates $125.5 billion, the highest-ever level, according to Newsom. That’s $20,427 per student.

“There's an increase in per pupil funding, but I wouldn't be fooled into thinking that those numbers indicate that schools really have more money to work with than in previous years,” said California School Boards Association spokesperson Troy Flint. The organization represents almost 1,000 districts and county offices of education statewide.

That’s because declining enrollment combined with rising teacher salaries, un-funded state mandates and other increased costs are squeezing local school districts.

LAist spoke to Flint and several other school finance experts to understand the financial challenges California districts face as they create their spending plans for next school year.

How does the state fund school districts?

The majority of the state’s general fund comes from personal income, sales tax and corporation tax revenue.

“That's great when the economy is good and state revenues are growing, and it's trickier when the economy is bad and state revenues are small,” said USC education professor Lawrence Picus.

California law guarantees TK-12 schools and community colleges a minimum level of funding each year, usually about 40% of the state’s general fund. (Property tax is a local revenue source, and considered to be less volatile but with limited growth.)

The state provides a base amount of money multiplied by each student and there is additional funding for every low-income, English-language learner, unhoused or foster youth student in the district. This system is called the Local Control Funding Formula.

How does enrollment affect school funding?

Since California sets funding rates per student, it needs a way to count those students. This is average daily attendance — how many students show up for class each day.

Currently, fewer students are enrolling at schools throughout the state, particularly in areas with high costs of living like Los Angeles. Students who are enrolled are also missing more school compared to before the pandemic.

“The intuitive response is, ‘well, if you have declining enrollment, you have fewer students, you should need less money,’” Flint said. “But in practice it doesn't really work that way.”

That’s because a district may lose a few students from each class across several schools each year, which may not justify laying off staff or closing a campus.

California education law blunts the immediate impact of declining enrollment by calculating funding based on the highest of three attendance counts: current year, prior year, or the average of the three most recent years, but over time fewer students means a smaller multiplier for state funding.

Increasing costs

Michael Fine is CEO of Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT), the California agency that supports public schools' financial and business practices. He estimated schools are experiencing an estimated 5-6% cost increase every year.

The sources of that increase can include an increase in sexual assault claims (and the ensuing legal costs), utilities and insurance costs.

California provides money toward these increased costs through the Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA). This year’s proposed COLA is a 2.41% increase, less than half the estimated increase districts are experiencing, Fine said.

“At the state, they can say we are fully funding our commitment to TK through 12 education,” Fine said. “But at the local level, it feels like things are constrained. It feels like a pinch or actually a reduction.”

Another factor is the push to increase educators’ salaries in light of California’s high cost of living.

This year unions representing teachers at 32 school districts, including Los Angeles Unified, are negotiating contracts under a unified platform called “We Can’t Wait.” The campaign has already led to one strike and negotiations have stalled in more than a dozen districts, including LAUSD.

Federal, state budget uncertainty

This year’s state revenue projection is higher than expected, in part because of high salaries tied to artificial intelligence, but there’s no guarantee the funding will last.

Alix Gallagher studies school finance at Policy Analysis for California (PACE) and said that because revenue is unpredictable, lawmakers often opt to fund short-term initiatives rather than make long-term commitments.

“Whatever positive effects we're seeing [from short-term funding] are not the types of positive effects we might see if our funding was more stable,” Gallagher said.

For example, this year there is $1 billion for community schools, $757 million to support learning recovery related to the COVID-19 pandemic and $22.9 million for schools damaged by the January 2025 wildfires in L.A. County.

The budget also includes a one-time $2.8 billion grant that can be used for a variety of purposes from filling in the funding gap left by declining enrollment to supporting teacher training.

“Many districts will use that to mitigate some of their struggles,” Fine said. “All it does is buy time.”

The federal government also provides some money for education, but it’s also unclear how that funding will change in the second year of the Trump Administration’s second term.

In 2025, there were cuts to migrant education, mental health, and some internet access programs, although the courts ordered the administration to restore funding to several programs including teacher-training and afterschool programs.

What’s next for California school funding?

Newsom will present a revised spending plan in May and California lawmakers have until June 15 to pass the state’s budget.

In the meantime, local school districts will begin crafting their own budgets based on the governor’s proposal.

Fine said district administrators and elected school boards will have to manage the financial consequences of declines in enrollment over time.

“They make the hard decisions, their boards make the difficult, hard decisions to make, cuts to services and programs,” Fine said.

How can I monitor my school district’s financial health?

School budget proposals should be presented at public meetings, often the school board, where elected leaders can ask questions and the public can weigh in.

Districts may also create a working group, often called a budget advisory committee, of staff, families, community members and students to come up with a plan to address the district's financial challenges.

One indicator of your school district’s financial health are interim reports due in December and March to the County Offices of Education. These reports show how and whether the district can meet its financial obligations for the current and two following years and are labeled:

• Positive, the district can meet its obligations
• Qualified, the district may not be able to meet its obligations
• Negative, the district cannot meet its obligations without changes

Two of Orange County’s 32 districts filed qualified reports in December— Cypress and Saddleback Valley Unified. LAist has also requested this information from the Los Angeles County Office of Education and will update this article when we hear back.

$8.63 million in emergency grants sent to 562 families.

That’s how much financial assistance the Entertainment Community Fund has provided to performing arts and entertainment industry workers since fires broke out in Southern California in January last year. And the organization still is distributing grants, with the knowledge that needs are likely to increase soon.

 ”We know that the trajectory of the recovery process with homeowners and their insurances is that they will often pay some portion or all of a rent expense while people are displaced from their homes,” says Keith McNutt, the ECF’s Western Regional director. “That usually only lasts nine months to a year, and we're of course coming up on that year.”

Why entertainment workers?

Providing support to the entertainment community is nothing new for the nonprofit Entertainment Community Fund (formerly known as The Actors Fund), a national organization that’s been around since 1882 and is a sort of safety net for arts and entertainment workers in any kind of need or crisis. They also have built some of their own affordable housing.

A significant portion of their work, McNutt says, is making people aware that help is available and also that it’s OK to access it.

“It’s hard for any professional person in their craft to ask for help from anyone,” McNutt says. “But literally, we were created 140 years ago for exactly that reason. Because people work hard in this industry, but the industry doesn't provide regular income, regular benefits, [...] predictability, a standard career ladder.”

On top of the normal unpredictability factors of a career in the performing arts, there’s also the fact that the past five years have been “such a brutal onslaught of crises,” as McNutt describes it, from the COVID-19 pandemic to the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes in 2023 to the January 2025 fires, “that people have not had time to recover.”

What help is available?

The Entertainment Community Fund’s staff of social workers, career counselors and health insurance counselors provides a wide range of services (many of them free), like classes on things like building “parallel” or “sideline” careers to supplement income and support groups (including some specifically designed for people impacted by the 2025 fires).

Some services, like emergency financial assistance, require a more formal application to show that a recipient does in fact work professionally in performing arts or entertainment.

From ‘parallel’ careers to career changes

For a long time, McNutt says, he heard from arts professionals who saw their non-arts-related day jobs (ECF calls them “parallel” or “sideline” jobs) as sort of betrayal of their art, but “ our message has always been, ‘No, no, no [...] that's what helps you stay in your creative craft.’”

Over the past couple of years, though, with hardships compounding and  ”profound shifts in the amount of employment, particularly in television and film,” McNutt has seen something different.

“We have seen significant increases in the number of people who are coming to our career center to consider transitioning to other careers," he says. "And that is definitely a change.”

And even for those cases and questions like, “How do you apply for a job that's not in the industry when you've never worked outside the industry?” McNutt says that's "something we can help people with.”

When it comes to renters, Scorpios are “particular,” Libras are “gold,” and Aquariuses “can't make up their mind.” That’s according to Dave Goldstein, the Los Angeles landlord behind the company Art Deco Apartments.

For years, Goldstein has asked prospective tenants to tell him their astrological sign as part of the application process. He said he doesn’t care about credit scores, and he loves tenants with pets. He knows his approach to tenant screening is unusual. But when it comes to picking the right renters for his century-old, tastefully appointed buildings, he said it works.

“It gives me an idea of their personality,” Goldstein told LAist outside The Mauretania, a well preserved example of 1930s Streamline Moderne architecture in Hancock Park.

“I mean, it's impersonal to just get an application,” he said. “You're going to get buildings that aren't that good. You're going to get impersonal people that don't care about anything.”

The question might be helpful to Goldstein, but some housing rights experts say it could be pushing the boundaries of what’s legal.

Why Leos make good tenants

While he hasn’t blacklisted any particular star sign, Goldstein said in his experience, people with certain signs are easier to deal with as tenants.

“If they say that they're a Leo, I go, ‘Great,’” he said. “‘I can't wait to rent to you. You're your own boss. I don't have to do nothing. You'll change every light bulb. You'll never call us.’”

Goldstein also likes to ask tenants where they grew up and the color of their car. He said people are sometimes surprised by the questions, but they tend to like his approach.

“They just can't believe it, because they're used to just texting a management company,” he said. “They're not used to personal service.”

The Mauretania, a 1930s apartment building with distinctive curved windows looking out on the street, is one of the properties Dave Goldstein owns through Art Deco Apartments.

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David Wagner/LAist

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Housing rights lawyers weigh in

But is asking a tenant about their astrological sign legal? Housing rights attorneys told LAist they’re not aware of any laws or court rulings that explicitly ban landlords from screening tenants based on their birth month. But they said the question is still legally precarious.

“There's not a specific law against it,” said Rodney Leggett, director of litigation at the L.A.-based Housing Rights Center. “But because of the seemingly arbitrary nature of asking somebody about their astrological sign, it could potentially violate the [California Unruh Civil Rights Act].”

The law bans businesses from discriminating against people based on personal characteristics including sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status or sexual orientation.

It does not specifically mention astrology. But lawyers said depending on how businesses treat people with different signs, an argument could be made that they’re being discriminated against for no legitimate business reason based on a personal characteristic they can’t control.

“Astrological signs are not a traditional ‘protected characteristic’ in most anti-discrimination laws,” said Alisa Randell, a managing attorney with the legal aid organization Public Counsel. “But we do have this expansive law in California that is not limited to the categories that are laid out… So I think this is dicey for him.”

Goldstein said he has tenants of all astrological signs, and he plans to keep asking applicants about their birth charts.

“I don't know if it's legal to ask about it or not,” he said. “But it's fun to. And I know they're not going to lie about it.”

A three-judge panel ruled Wednesday that the new congressional maps created by California voters in the fall are legal and should remain in place, handing a win to state Democrats who hope the new districts will swing five congressional seats for their party next year.

The ruling denies a request by California Republicans and the Trump administration for the federal court in Los Angeles to issue a preliminary injunction blocking the maps created by Proposition 50.

In the 117-page ruling, the federal judges rejected GOP arguments that the new maps amounted to racial gerrymandering, which has been prohibited by the U.S. Supreme Court. The panel ruled 2-1, with the two Democratic appointees ruling for California and Judge Kenneth K. Lee, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, dissenting.

In the opinion, Judge Josephine Staton wrote that the panel’s conclusion “probably seems obvious to anyone who followed the news” about Proposition 50 last year. She noted that during the campaign, no one ever described the new maps as racially motivated — including the Republican plaintiffs.

“No one on either side of that debate characterized the map as a racial gerrymander,” the opinion states, noting that the California Republican Party called it a “political power grab to help Democrats retake Congress and impeach Trump,” and Attorney General Pamela J. Bondi deemed it a “redistricting power grab” for political gain.”

The judges also rejected Republican arguments that the voters’ intent did not matter. The majority wrote that voters clearly were endorsing the argument that both sides were making: that this was a partisan power grab, aimed at giving Democrats a leg up in the midterm elections and counteracting what GOP-led states were doing with their own districts.

Democrats celebrated the ruling.

“Republicans’ weak attempt to silence voters failed. California voters overwhelmingly supported Prop 50 — to respond to Trump’s rigging in Texas — and that is exactly what this court concluded,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement.

Newsom pushed lawmakers to put Proposition 50 on a special statewide ballot after Trump set off a mid-decade redistricting scramble by demanding Texas redraw its maps to benefit Republicans.

In his dissenting opinion, Lee wrote that race “likely played a predominant role in drawing at least one district because the smoking gun is in the hands of Paul Mitchell,” referring to a Democratic consultant who helped draw the new lines.

Lee argued that Mitchell publicly “boasted” about boosting Latino voting power in the 13th Congressional District in theCentral Valley, and that voter intent should not be the only basis for the court’s decision.

“To be sure, California’s main goal was to add more Democratic congressional seats. But that larger political gerrymandering plan does not allow California to smuggle in racially gerrymandered seats,” said Lee, who wrote that Democrats likely wanted to create a Latino majority district “as part of a racial spoils system to award a key constituency that may be drifting away from the Democratic party.”

The ruling could be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Congressional candidates have until March 6 to file papers to run for office in the June primary.