The Brief

Uber today lost its long-running attempt to overturn a California law that would require it to provide employment rights to its drivers and delivery workers.

The ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals could have major implications — depending what the state Supreme Court decides in a separate but related case.

Uber and Postmates, a food-delivery platform Uber now owns, alleged that Assembly Bill 5 violated their rights under the Equal Protection Clause of the state and U.S. constitutions. AB 5 requires ride-hailing and delivery companies to treat their workers as employees instead of independent contractors and codifies the so-called ABC test to determine which workers should receive benefits. Under the law, other gig companies are subject to a different test, which Uber and Postmates claimed was unfair.

The companies sued and sought an injunction against the law that took effect at the beginning of 2020. Last year, a three-judge panel at the 9th Circuit sided with Uber and revived the case, which had been previously dismissed by a federal judge.

But writing for the full 11-judge appeals court today, Judge Jacqueline Nguyen said there are “plausible reasons” for treating Uber differently from other types of companies that use gig workers, such as Wag, a platform that connects dog owners and dog walkers, because the Legislature “perceived transportation and delivery companies as the most significant perpetrators of the problem it sought to address — worker misclassification.”

More than 1.4 million workers in California do app-based driving and delivery work for big gig companies such as Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and Instacart, according to the industry’s latest estimates.

Lorena Gonzalez, chief officer of the California Labor Federation and the former state lawmaker who authored AB 5, said in a statement today: “This is a victory for all workers in the state, but especially the chronically misclassified workers in rideshare and delivery jobs. Now, we must continue to seek ways to enforce this law.”

The ruling means “the Legislature can continue to make laws that impact companies differently if the decision to do so is rational, without being concerned that such laws would violate the constitutional rights of the corporation,” said Veena Dubal, a UC Irvine law professor whose research centers on labor and inequality. “This is particularly important because so many sectors are now concentrated by two or three large companies.”

The decision also is significant because the California Supreme Court in May heard oral arguments in a case challenging the constitutionality of Proposition 22, the initiative the gig industry put on the ballot in 2020, and which a majority of California voters approved. Prop. 22 exempted Uber and other companies such as Lyft, DoorDash and Instacart from AB 5, allowing them to continue to treat their workers as independent contractors while giving them some new benefits they did not have before, such as guaranteed minimum earnings.

Uber is counting on the state’s highest court to uphold Prop. 22, on which it spent more than $57 million out of the about $200 million the gig industry put into the campaign. It contends AB 5 threatens the “flexible work opportunities” that many Californians want.

Theane Evangelis, a lawyer for Uber, in an emailed statement today reiterated the company’s position that “with AB 5 the Legislature unfairly targeted my clients out of animus rather than reason.” Uber had argued that AB 5 has many exemptions for companies that pay workers in different industries. They include live performers, music professionals, real estate appraisers and more.

But William Gould, professor emeritus at Stanford Law School and a former chairman of the National Labor Relations Board, called the opinion “eminently sensible.” Gould said the court “correctly holds that Uber and others may be covered where the Legislature deems them to be disproportionately responsible for inequality in the gig economy.”

If Prop. 22 is upheld, it would be a huge victory for Uber and the other big gig companies, but today’s ruling means they would still be on the hook in any cases where they are found to have violated laws related to worker classification before Prop. 22 took effect. In the appeals court decision, Nguyen referred to “ongoing state enforcement actions seeking retrospective relief, including civil penalties,” against Uber and Postmates.

If Prop. 22 is thrown out, the appeals court ruling means “these companies do not have this case to fall back on to exempt themselves from having to provide basic employment protections,” Dubal said.

The state Supreme Court files its written opinion within 90 days of oral argument, so its decision could come by the end of August.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

It started like a typical Sunday afternoon in Long Beach.

I took my regular African dance class with Ndella Davis-Diassy, then had some out-of-this-world barbecue at Chef Memo’s before ending my afternoon with a long walk along the coast with a friend.

As we walked and talked, we saw the usual suspects — abandoned toothbrushes, deodorant sticks and empty laundry detergent containers blowing like tumbleweeds. The cleaning products dirtying the stretch of sand didn’t make me want to put on my shoes, but the birds did.

“Is that a seagull?” I asked. It was dead. A few more steps and we saw a cormorant, one of those black, glossy birds that are always sunbathing with their wings out. Dead. A few more steps. Another seagull. Dead. More steps. Then another cormorant. Along a 1.5-mile stretch, I saw eight dead birds.

At first, I was sad. Then I was overwhelmed. But eventually, I got curious and decided to look into it.

Searching for answers

A dead bird lies on the beach near the Long Beach shore.

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Megan Tan

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For The LA Local

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Like any good millennial armchair detective, I started my investigation on Reddit. 

It was shocking to see that something was killing birds all along California beaches, from Orange County to San Diego and up the coast toward Ventura County and beyond. A user in Santa Barbara summed up the situation succinctly, if without proper grammar: “Was at Ellwood Beach yesterday, counted 14 dead birds, spaced about one every 30-40 feet.”

There was nothing specifically about Long Beach that I could find, though I did learn there’s a bar in Japan called “Little Long Beach” in the r/longbeach Reddit community.

Turning to an older technology, I dialed 310-514-2573, the number for International Bird Rescue, a nonprofit organization focused on saving seabirds. 

I got an answering machine with prerecorded instructions: If you see a bird that needs help, find a box, place the bird in the box, put a cloth over the bird, put the bird in a specific area and do not offer it food or water.

Next, I called the Long Beach Lifeguards Headquarters and spoke to someone on background — they weren’t authorized to speak to me — who told me finding dead birds was nothing new, but the number of dead birds they’re seeing was anything but normal. Then they told me I should talk to the people I called first, International Bird Rescue, because that’s who they called when they found 30 birds dead on the beach one day.

“30 birds!” I shouted back at them. “I know,” they said quietly. “It’s a lot of dead birds.”

But they didn’t have a clue what was causing it.

The man with the metal detector

A few days later, I went back to the scene of the crime — for lack of a better term — and saw a man with a metal detector scanning the sand along Long Beach City Beach.

I noticed a few things: He was built like a wrestler — tall and dense — and was wearing camouflage shorts, a matching hat and a white shirt and, this will be important later, he was not carrying a shovel.

He also told me the dead birds I saw were a drop in the ocean compared to what he’s been seeing lately. “Every time I go to a beach, I see about 10 dead birds. Maybe that’s natural, but I think it’s a lot.”

When he spots the birds, he doesn’t do what I do, which is gasp and move on. He puts on a pair of gloves and buries them with his hands. “You’ll never know it’s there. Unless your kids start digging in the sand,” he said.

The man with the metal detector declined to give me his name because he didn’t trust the media. But he did tell me the theory he had about how the birds died.

Across the ocean, about 2,000 feet in front of us, was an island with a beige concrete tower wrapped in blue lines. He pointed to it.

“That one, right in front of us. That’s an oil rig,” he told me. “All these islands out here that look all pretty are oil rigs.”

His theory is that oil is being pumped into the ocean and when seabirds dive for food, they get oil all over themselves. That’s why they wind up on the shore.

The THUMS theory

The man with the metal detector was pointing at the THUMS Islands, an acronym for Texaco, Humble, Union, Mobil and Shell.

In the 1960s, those five companies leased multiple oil fields together off the coast of Long Beach and produced 150,000 barrels a day at their peak. But recently, production shrunk from 15,000 to 8,000 barrels a day. The city of Long Beach is currently debating whether the islands should remain active oil islands or be converted into parks, research centers or boutique resorts.

“These birds were not oiled,” JD Bergeron, the CEO of International Bird Rescue, told me a few days later in a phone interview. Bergeron is based in the Bay Area, but his organization also has a wildlife center in San Pedro.

Around March 1, Bergeron and his team at International Bird Rescue started receiving four times the usual number of calls from residents across Southern California. They’ve all been about dead birds. He told me their helpline went from 10 calls a day about dead birds to 40.

“When the numbers start to come in more rapidly, we get nervous,” Bergeron said, adding that his organization is exploring several causes for the uptick in dead birds. But he reiterated that none of the dead birds had been covered in oil.

The man with the metal detector’s theory didn’t pan out. So I went back to the beach.

The trash theory

It started like a typical Sunday afternoon in Long Beach.

“I don’t know exactly why the birds are dying,” Long Beach resident Adam Novak told me. Novak has been walking the beach almost every day for 15 years. “I’m sure it’s probably eating the trash. It’s pretty dirty out here.”

I let Novak get on with his day and walked 1.5 miles from Junipero Beach to Rosie’s Dog Beach. I passed the Belmont Pier, the Belmont Plaza Pool and multiple moms with kids buying fruit in plastic containers and individually wrapped ice cream from various futeros and paleteros.

Along the shoreline, I stepped over every size of trash imaginable, from small salsa containers to an abandoned pair of mismatched white Pumas to a large black suitcase you would definitely have to check on an airplane. At one point, I spotted a dark figure 100 feet away floating in the water and debated whether it was a cute seal bobbing around or a mattress.

It was a mattress.

But Novak’s trash theory is not on International Bird Rescue’s list of causes to explore.

When one of the first carcasses was found this year, Bergeron said they had to rule out the worst-case scenario for the cause of death: bird flu. Bergeron compared bird flu to the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s highly contagious and incurable, and it was the reason egg prices increased back in 2024.

Thankfully, when the bird flu test came back, it was negative. Bergeron and his partners had to go back to the drawing board, but at least they could exhale.

The freak incident theory 

The next theory International Bird Rescue had to rule out was harmful algal blooms called red tide that are caused by fertilizer run off into the ocean. The fish eat the algae, and then the birds eat the fish, potentially causing the birds to die.

Red tide left a mark on a variety of marine animals along the coast in 2025 and was also visibly present in Long Beach in 2022. But Bergeron’s team wan’t able to link it directly to the surge in dead birds.

And there are other isolated accidents that Bergeron and his partners tried to rule out.

Back in 2021, a colony of about 10,000 beach birds nesting in Bolsa Chica was devastated when a drone crashed into them. According to Bergeron, International Bird Rescue was able to save 3,300 baby chicks. Many others didn’t make it.

But so far, they hadn’t found an isolated freak incident like that, which led Bergeron to his strongest theory: The birds are starving because of climate change.

What we know — and what we don’t

A bird soars near the Long Beach shore.

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Megan Tan

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For The LA Local

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According to the NOAA IEA Program, an oceanic heat wave known as “The Blob” has been present in the Pacific Ocean for the past seven years.

“The Blob” is a mass of water with elevated temperatures moving around the Pacific Ocean. Fish dislike warm water, so when “The Blob” moves into specific regions, fish either dive deeper into colder temperatures or move farther away into colder waters.

Even though Bergeron was hesitant to wholeheartedly point to “The Blob” as the single contributing factor, he admitted it outweighs all the others. “From my perspective, it’s hard to see any version of this in which the temperature of the water is not a factor.”

The truth is that there are currently no hard facts explaining what is causing dead birds to wash up along the coast of Long Beach and Southern California. But there is one fact that cannot be ignored: As we head into the summer months, when families and tourists flock to the beaches, the dead birds will be there. Some seen and some buried in the sand.

Maybe, then, the question isn’t what is causing their deaths, but who is responsible for cleaning them off the beach?

“I wish I had a good answer there,” Bergeron said. “I don’t think that there is necessarily anyone whose responsibility it is to pick up dead birds.”

Residents who see a dead bird can call City of Long Beach Animal Care Services at 562-570-7387. But someone there told me they consider “dead animal pick-ups an non-emergency.” It may take the city 24 to 72 hours to respond. By then, the tide may have shifted, and who knows where the dead bird will be. 

Or they can do what an unassuming retired man with a metal detector does: put on some gloves and dig.

The Las Vegas Sphere has become the highest grossing arena in the world since opening three years ago. It's featured residencies by legendary bands like U2 and Phish.

And now the Sphere is expanding — and reshaping what a live entertainment venue can be.

“All of that which is around you is being controlled and created by the artists and the people that are involved in the production,” said Joel Veenstra, chair of the Department of Drama and head of stage management at UC Irvine, who joined AirTalk, LAist’s daily news program.

The screen and the tech behind it

Phish perform during night three of their nine-night run at Sphere in April

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Anadolu

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Getty Images

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The creative outlet the Sphere provides artists is thanks to cutting-edge technology. The curved dome houses a 366-foot-tall and 516-foot-wide screen that resembles that of a planetarium, making it the largest high-resolution LED screen on earth.

Glen Nowak, professor of architecture at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, says Las Vegas is the pioneer of integrated resorts — mega buildings that blend concepts of casinos, restaurants, stores, and other amenities.

He says the Sphere is doing the same thing in the performing arts venue space.

“Typically, a stage is framed, and your attention is focused straight ahead, but the Sphere really inverts that,” he said.

Training the next generation

UC Irvine offers a themed entertainment and immersive entertainment class every three years as part of a graduate program. Some alumni of the program actually worked on the Sphere’s development.

“We look at the world and space with our design faculty and look at how we can prepare people for this field,” Veenstra said.

Experiences at the Sphere

LAist listeners shared what they experienced at the venue.

Phish perform during night three of their nine-night run at Sphere in April.

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Rich Fury / Sphere Entertainment

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Getty Images

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The Sphere during UFC 306: Riyadh Season Noche

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Christian Petersen

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Getty Images

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The Grateful Dead logo, Steal Your Face Skull, is displayed on the Sphere, promoting the residency.

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Kevin Carter/Getty Images

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Getty Images North America

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Taking the Sphere beyond Vegas

Sphere Entertainment Co., owned by business and sports mogul James Dolan, who most notably owns the New York Knicks and Madison Square Garden, plans to bring the Sphere concept to Washington, D.C. and Abu Dhabi, the company announced on its website.

“There's a lot of opportunity because people want an experience that's lived and feel something different than just staying at home on their screen,” Veenstra said. “It's kind of like what the theater has historically been, but now enhanced.”

To see a list of what events are coming up, here's the Sphere schedule.

Eleven weeks into the Iran war and a global energy shock, California drivers are paying the highest gas prices in the nation, an average of $6.15 a gallon this week.

The pain at the pump is colliding with California’s ambitious push away from fossil fuels, as refinery closures, supply disruptions and a deepening debate over reliance on imported oil and gas raise new questions about whether the state can keep gasoline affordable during the transition.

Here are five things to know about how Sacramento is responding to the crisis and what it could mean for prices in the months ahead.

California can see six weeks out — after that, prices could rise.

California can confidently forecast gasoline and crude oil shipments coming in through about mid-June, and supply looks stable through that window, Siva Gunda, vice chair of the California Energy Commission, told an Assembly oversight hearing last week.

After that, oil and gas will cost significantly more to secure, he said.

California can outbid the rest of the world for gasoline and crude oil, pulling shipments away from Asia and other markets. But that bidding war comes at a cost, and consumers will pay it at the pump, Gunda told the committee.

To hedge against that uncertainty, Gunda said California is negotiating long-term supply deals with Asian refiners that could lock in another three to six months of certainty.

“Liquidity, in the short-term, is okay,” Gunda said. “As we move forward, it's really about making sure more ships are coming, more marine vessels are coming.”

As refineries close, imports are filling the gap.

The Iran war has exposed California’s growing reliance on imports of both crude oil and gasoline. The state needs to import more supply as in-state refineries shut down.

Neale Mahoney, a Stanford economist, told the committee that imports can be a benefit. They add competition and lower prices, since newer overseas refineries often produce gasoline more cheaply than California's.

Other experts agree. UC Berkeley energy economist Severin Borenstein, also at the hearing, said California's resilience now depends on building out port, pipeline and storage capacity to handle imports, not on bringing new refineries online.

As the war has dragged on, California refiners have shifted crude sourcing away from the Persian Gulf toward Latin America, Alaska and Canada, Gunda said at the hearing last week. The state met about 20% of its refined-product demand through imports in the year before the war began.

“Fundamentally, we have to recognize we are going to have fewer refineries, and the solution is imports,” Borenstein said.

The oil industry says imports are the problem, not the answer.

But the oil industry is pushing back, saying that relying on increased imports is the wrong strategy. California's fuel system has been "weakened by design" by state policies pushing refiners out of the state, said Jodie Muller, president and CEO of the Western States Petroleum Association — a characterization energy economists dispute.

Because California requires that cars burn a specialized fuel blend, shipments can be tougher to source and take longer to arrive, exposing consumers to delays and volatility every time something goes wrong globally.

“Continuing to move to more and more imports will put this state at more and more risk,” Muller said last week. “If you think we are in a precarious position right now, we will continue to see more and more volatility.”

And the oil industry argues that the playing field is tilted. California refiners face some of the strictest rules in the world, the industry argues, while imported gasoline is produced under far weaker standards before it’s shipped halfway around the world. California requires importers to certify their fuels meet its standards, but the industry argues that foreign producers operate under less stringent environmental rules.

$6.50 or $7-plus? Experts can't agree.

In the end, what you feel most acutely is the price you pay at the pump. And even the experts aren't sure where things will land.

Asked what consumers should expect if the conflict drags on, Gunda said California prices will likely settle "under seven, more like $6.50." He explained that demand starts dropping once gas crosses about $5.50 a gallon, and California is already seeing drivers shift from higher-priced stations to cheaper ones.

Borenstein is less optimistic. If the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway that carried more than 20 million barrels of oil a day before the start of the war, stays closed another 60 days, the price of crude could climb by another $40 to $80 a barrel, he said. Each $40 increase translates into about $1 per gallon at the pump. He called that scenario plausible, and warned there's almost nothing California policy can do about it.

“Unfortunately, I think that would be a crisis,” Borenstein said. “I know we all hope that doesn't happen and that the flow of oil resumes, but the reality is we are on borrowed time as we run down inventories.”

Will high gas prices boost EV sales?

California has spent years trying to push drivers out of gas cars. Now sky-high gas prices may be sparking interest in some consumers.

EV sales in California slumped last year after the Trump administration revoked a key federal tax incentive, undercutting California’s plan to steadily replace gas-powered cars with electric ones to meet its climate goals.

Gov. Gavin Newsom is now pushing to revive some of those sales through a new state incentive under negotiation in the budget. It’s too early to know whether pain at the pump is translating into a broad rebound in EV demand. But some consumers are already making the switch.

When gas prices recently climbed past $6 a gallon in Redding, Victor Ireland said his daughter decided there was “no way” she wanted a gas-powered car after watching the family spend more than $140 on a single Sacramento round trip in their minivan.

The search wasn’t easy. EV inventories have dropped across the country since expiring federal tax credits briefly boosted demand. The family searched dealerships across the West, from Washington to Kansas, after his daughter settled on a specific model: the Fiat 500e Giorgio Armani Collector's Edition. They found a dealer in Utah that could ship the vehicle to California.

Ireland said the soaring cost of gasoline only reinforced his family’s decision. “You just charge it and go,” he said.

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