The Brief

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.

Lyft must pay $272.5 million in a historic settlement with the state of California and three cities over allegations that the company misclassified its drivers before it helped write a law that allowed it to consider them independent contractors.

Thousands of drivers who drove for the ride-hailing company from 2016 to 2020 are entitled to employee benefits such as minimum wage, overtime and reimbursement for work-related expenses, California Attorney General Rob Bonta said Thursday at a press conference in San Francisco. The drivers will split at least $237 million, which is the largest misclassification settlement in state history, he said.

“Make no mistake, misclassification is how companies cheat workers,” the attorney general said, standing with the city attorneys and staff of San Francisco, San Diego and Los Angeles, who worked on the case for six years. Their lawsuits were consolidated in San Francisco Superior Court with those of the state Labor Commissioner’s Office and two individual drivers. “That’s not a business model, that’s exploitation,” Bonta said.

The state and cities also sued Uber over misclassification and wage theft. Both companies have been fighting the lawsuits for years and asked the state and U.S. supreme courts for review. Both high courts refused to review the cases.

“Lyft is only part of the picture,” said San Diego City Attorney Heather Ferbert at the press conference. “Uber has a larger share of the rideshare market, and that means more drivers, more miles driven and more affected workers. So our job is not done.”

Ferbert told CalMatters afterward that “if Uber doesn’t want to come to the table and talk about a meaningful settlement,” the case against the company could go to trial.

In 2020, Lyft, Uber and other gig-economy companies headquartered in California spent $205 million on Proposition 22, a ballot initiative that 58% of the state’s voters approved. It exempted the companies from state labor law and allowed them to treat drivers and delivery workers as independent contractors instead of employees.

“This settlement closes a chapter from a very different time, before Prop. 22,” said George Flynn, a Lyft spokesperson.

But drivers and other gig workers have complained about many of the same issues since Prop. 22 was passed. CalMatters found that effectively, nobody is in charge of upholding the promises gig companies made under the law, such as guaranteed wages, some healthcare benefits and a way to fight against “deactivations,” or being kicked off the apps.

This year, Uber drivers sued the company, accusing it of failing to create a system that allows them to appeal deactivations. Also this year, ride-hailing drivers formed a union after winning the right to collectively bargain last year.

Rideshare Drivers United, a Los Angeles-based group whose members filed the initial 5,000 claims with the state on behalf of Lyft and Uber drivers, said the settlement falls short of the $434 million in claims it filed on behalf of about 1,900 Lyft drivers.

“Yes, we are getting some of the money back because we fought for it, but why do they not have to pay basic minimum wages and expenses like every other company?” said Nicole Moore, president of the group, in a statement. “Are we OK with letting these companies cheat a system of the most basic labor rights?”

Many drivers have worked for both Uber and Lyft. Yasha Timenovich, who drives and does deliveries in the Los Angeles area, said he expects to be eligible for the Lyft settlement and for compensation from Uber when the time comes.

“Since we waited six years for this lawsuit, what’s another year?” said Timenovich, who now does gig work for Amazon, DoorDash, Grubhub, Roadie, Spark and Lyft. He recently signed up for another gig delivery service, Veho. All of those companies consider him an independent contractor. He said he works six or seven days a week, sometimes up to 18 hours a day.

California Labor Commissioner Lilia García-Brower said in a statement that her office is forgoing its part of the settlement, $5.45 million, “so that every available dollar goes directly to drivers who filed wage claims.” Her office said more than 1,600 Lyft drivers filed the claims; the settlement will apply to any eligible Lyft drivers so the exact number of potential claims is unknown.

A settlement administrator will manage the fund that will be doled out to drivers, who will be eligible for compensation based on the number of miles and hours they drove for Lyft between April 2016 and December 2020. The administrator will contact drivers once the San Francisco Superior Court approves the settlement and Lyft begins making payments to the fund.

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Lyft said it can choose to make settlement payments over four years.

An Uber spokesperson did not return CalMatters’ request to comment on its pending case or the comments the officials made about their ongoing litigation against the company — including Bonta saying that Uber was “a major violator” when it came to misclassification.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Tommy Lefroy is the brainchild of singer-songwriters Tessa Mouzourakis and Wynter Bethel, who are putting a literary spin on soft rock. They’re getting ready to release their first album, The Precariat, this month and have been teasing fans along the way, with their latest single, “Vacuum” out Friday.

The name Tommy Lefroy is a reference to the man who is often said to have inspired Jane Austen’s character Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. Bethel said they wanted to “subvert and embody the muse or the 'heartbreaker.'”

Their first album, The Precariat, draws inspiration from the works of economists and social activists. Mouzourakis cites Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism as inspiration for the album because the book talks about people in power capitalizing on disaster.

“We’re seeing that now, although we’re kind of in a state of constant crisis,” Mouzourakis said. (Fun fact, the band even hosts book swaps at their shows.)

Then there’s British economist Guy Standing, who wrote The Precariat in 2011, about a new socioeconomic class facing financial insecurity and instability. Their new album focuses on that feeling of instability they experienced firsthand, such as when Mouzourakis moved to L.A. around the time of the January 2025 fires, which also delayed recording their album.

Bethel is originally from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Mouzourakis hails from Vancouver, British Columbia. The two met in Nashville in 2017 in songwriting circles and started creating music together during the pandemic.

The time they spent together writing their first EP Flightrisk in London inspired their latest single, “Vacuum.” Bethel said when she moved to London, she didn’t know anyone except for Mouzourakis.

“We were kind of referencing this sense of us having no community besides each other, the band becoming this focus and this thing that was tying us together,” said Mouzourakis. Bethel adds, "It was a gut feeling that led me to ask Tessa to start a band, and in this song, we're kind of equating that to sort of blind faith of following someone into the dark."

Songs like “Slush Puppy,” the first single off The Precariat, reference the book The Coming Insurrection written by The Invisible Committee and touch on the surveillance state.

“Things feel sometimes futureless, or it feels so heavy, it feels unbearable,” Mouzourakis said. “We tried to offer sort of glimmers of hope in community and friendship and the people around you and talking to each other, sharing in this experience, because it is incredibly isolating.”

The Precariat comes out Oct. 23, and they play at El Cid, 4212 W Sunset Blvd, on Nov. 4. Tickets are around $27.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a first-in-the-nation law that requires large companies to disclose if they or their predecessors profited from chattel slavery.

The Truth in Disclosure Act will require major companies operating in the state to disclose these historical and financial ties to enslavement-related transactions. 2

The bill was a top priority for the California Legislative Black Caucus this year. No other state requires corporations to account for their historical role in the slave economy, according to advocates.

Authored by Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, a Democrat from Culver City, the law applies to companies with annual worldwide gross receipts over $100 million. Assembly Bill 2599 also requires relevant records and disclosures to be made publicly available through a searchable digital to be established by the state’s Civil Rights Department.

The sworn filings will be subject to the penalty of perjury. The first affidavits are due by Jan. 15, 2029.

Supporters say the database could be a useful tool for academics, journalists and advocates to examine the connections between current corporate wealth and historical participation in the slave economy.

An example of a type of company that would likely have to make such disclosures in California is JP Morgan Chase. According to the California Reparations Task Force report, in 2005, the banking giant wrote a formal apology because two banks that it had taken ownership of had taken 13,000 enslaved people as security for loans in Louisiana. When enslavers could not pay back the loans, the banks took ownership of 1,200 people.

The law only applies to companies that existed or whose predecessor company existed on or before December 1964.

“I’m thinking agriculture. I’m thinking banking, insurance. I’m thinking anything in the financial sector,” Bryan said about the types of companies he expects may have to file disclosures.

“Once the public has this disclosure and we have a full accounting of the impact, then it’s up to us to decide what that means and what we’re going to do about it,” he added.

Several insurance companies opposed the measure as it moved through the Legislature. They said they already disclosed their connections to slavery through a 2000 California law that resulted in a publicly available report.

The newest law is the latest in a slow, uneven effort to act on the findings of the state’s reparations task force.

Newsom created the task force in 2020. After two years of study, it released a 2023 report detailing California's history of enslavement and discriminatory policies and made more than 100 recommendations. Economists estimated the state owes Black residents at least $800 billion for harms in policing, housing, and health.

Lawmakers have since taken small steps. In 2024, Newsom signed six of the Legislative Black Caucus' 14 priority bills that drew from the task force report, including a formal state apology. That year, the caucus declined to advance two ambitious reparations bills, opening a painful split with grassroots advocates.

The California chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Alliance for Reparations, Reconciliation and Truth applauded Newsom and Bryan for the new law.

“California has long been a state that prides itself on justice and equity and AB 2599 moves the needle closer to the transparency that is necessary to recognize and rectify these historical injustices and understand the roots of modern economic disparities,” said CAIR-CA Chief Executive Hussam Ayloush in a written statement.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.