The Brief

In a major victory for gig-work companies, the California Supreme Court today upheld a voter-approved law that allows Uber and other app makers to treat their drivers and delivery workers as independent contractors instead of employees.

About the decision

The decision on Proposition 22 was unanimous. Approved by 58% of California voters in 2020 and enacted the same year, Prop. 22 gave app-based gig workers some benefits but not full worker protections because the ballot initiative — which gig companies spent more than $200 million to pass — ensures they are not considered employees.

More than 1.4 million Californians are app-based gig workers for companies such as Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and Instacart, according to the industry’s latest estimates.

The court was not considering the pros and cons of the gig economy. During oral arguments in May in San Francisco, justices zeroed in on whether Prop. 22 was incompatible with California law, which gives the Legislature responsibility over a complete workers’ compensation system. By declaring gig workers independent contractors, Prop 22 made them ineligible for workers’ comp benefits. SEIU California, the Service Employees International Union that had sought to overturn the law on behalf of four gig workers, argued that this made the law unconstitutional.

Prop. 22 “does not preclude the electorate from exercising its initiative power to legislate on matters affecting workers’ compensation,” Justice Goodwin Liu wrote.

What's next for gig worker advocates

Advocates for gig workers said the ruling was a blow.

“This is a really tragic outcome,” said Veena Dubal, a law professor at UC Irvine who focuses on labor and inequality. “But it’s not the end of the road.” Dubal speculated that labor advocates could put together a proposition of their own, or municipalities and the state could adopt ordinances and laws that are more worker-friendly — such as making it illegal to set different wages for similar work based on algorithmic formulas.

Gig companies backed Prop. 22 in 2020 to win themselves an exclusion from a new state law known as Assembly Bill 5, which would have upended their business models by requiring them to consider their drivers and delivery workers as employees. Last month, Uber lost a legal battle to overturn AB 5 — meaning only Prop. 22 stood in the way of forcing ride-hailing and delivery app companies to comply with it.

What you should know about Prop. 22

Under Prop. 22, gig workers are promised guaranteed minimum earnings of 120% of minimum wage, health care stipends, occupational accident insurance and accidental death insurance. Many of the benefits come with stipulations:

• The guaranteed earnings are based on time on a “gig” and don’t include time workers spend waiting for a ride or delivery.
• The health care stipends are for certain eligible workers only, excluding those who qualify for public assistance, including Medi-Cal.
• The occupational accident insurance has a $1 million limit
• Gig workers are reimbursed for their mileage, although at less than the IRS-mandated rate employees receive — currently 35 cents a mile vs. 67 cents a mile. But this amount is included in the minimum earnings guarantee — it is not in addition to it.
• Because Prop. 22 will stand, app-based platform workers will continue to be ineligible for benefits such as sick pay, a minimum wage for all time worked, unemployment insurance and more.

Molly Weedn, spokesperson for the gig industry group Protect App-Based Drivers + Services, called the ruling “an overwhelming victory for voters’ rights and the integrity of our state’s initiative system.”

Gig workers vowed not to give up.

“We’ll continue to fight until we have justice for drivers and all workers,” said Nicole Moore, president of Los Angeles-based Rideshare Drivers United. Moore added that this ruling could mean “app companies are coming for all of our jobs, whether it’s in health care, construction, entertainment.”

A long-awaited vision for Huntington Drive is finally coming into focus. In the future, the busy corridor will have dedicated bus lanes, protected bike lanes, two lanes of vehicle traffic in each direction, a thin median and wide sidewalks.

This was the plan chosen by the City for the Huntington Drive Multi-Modal Transportation Improvement Project, which runs on an approximately four-mile stretch of the street between North Mission Road near LAC+USC Medical Center and Alhambra/South Pasadena. This had much more public support than the competing alternative, which featured a wide median rather than wide sidewalks, according to Mary Nemick, a spokesperson for the Bureau of Engineering.

Nemick said the next step is to hire a consultant to create design and engineering documents. This phase is expected to take about two years before groundbreaking can occur.

Currently, Huntington Drive has three vehicular lanes in each direction, the bike lanes are unprotected, and about 25% of the corridor lacks sidewalks. Though pedestrians and bicyclists account for only 1% of peak-hour trips, they account for 54% of severe or fatal injuries from traffic collisions, according to a project document.

The design budget is about $10.5 million, Nemick said, and the overall project cost will be determined after designs are completed.

The project is being funded by some of the money previously allocated for the construction of the 710 Freeway extension, which was abandoned in 2018 after decades of local opposition.

The Columbia Memorial Space Center in Downey held a groundbreaking ceremony Monday for a roughly 40,000-square-foot expansion that will include indoor and outdoor science learning areas and space for special exhibits.

The centerpiece of the buildout will include an interactive display of the Inspiration space shuttle mockup, where visitors can go inside the cargo bay.

Built in 1972, the 35-foot-tall model made of wood, plastic and aluminum functioned as a prototype and fitting tool for all of the orbiters that launched into space.

“We’re super excited to be able to put it on display for the public, really for the first time in forever,” Ben Dickow, president and executive director of the Columbia Memorial Space Center, told LAist.

The expansion will also allow for educational areas, where students can learn about the pioneering engineering and design work that went into building the model at Rockwell International in Downey.

The backstory

Last fall, after sitting in storage for more than a decade, the full-scale model was moved a few blocks to a temporary home.

The Inspiration space shuttle mockup was moved in sections to a temporary home last fall

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Courtesy Columbia Memorial Space Center

)

The Space Center said renovation work on the mock up will take months and include rehabs of its 60-foot cargo bay and flight deck.

Dickow said Downey is where all of the Apollo capsules that went to the moon and all of the space shuttles were designed and built.

“This is part of the L.A. story as much as entertainment or anything like that,” Dickow said, adding that it’s a legacy he feels like Angelenos sometimes forget. “The space craft that took humanity to the moon, the space craft that brought humanity into lower earth orbit and built the international space station, these are human firsts... and they all happened right here.”

What’s next? 

The Space Center is looking to raise $50 million that would go toward building plans, special exhibits and more.

Dickow said the new building that will house the space shuttle mockup should be open to the public in about two years.

By early next year, he said the plan is to have the shuttle model available for bi-monthly public visits as it undergoes renovation.

Pacific Palisades homeowners looking to sell high-end properties after the January fires could escape the city’s “mansion tax” under a proposal advanced Monday by a key committee of the Los Angeles City Council.

Measure ULA is a voter-approved tax on real estate selling for $5.3 million or more. The city uses the revenue for rent relief, eviction defense and affordable housing construction efforts.

Councilmember Traci Park, who represents the Palisades, said she has heard from hundreds of homeowners who say the tax is affecting their post-fire recovery plans.

“For some, recovery is going to mean leaving the Palisades,” Park said during Monday’s meeting of the Ad-Hoc Committee for L.A. Recovery. “In those instances — where a sale is by no means voluntary — I don't think we should impede that objective.”

Vote follows direction from mayor

Measure ULA levies a 4% tax on properties selling for more than $5.3 million, and a 5.5% tax on properties selling for more than $10.6 million.

Last month, Mayor Karen Bass sent a letter asking the City Council to pass an ordinance giving the city’s director of finance the power to exempt Palisades homeowners from Measure ULA within three years of the fire.

In her letter, Bass wrote: “After adoption of the ordinance, I will issue an executive directive instructing the Director of Finance to promulgate a temporary exemption that provides much needed relief for those Palisades residents who owned and occupied residential property in the Palisades at the time of the fire, avoids unintended loopholes, and furthers the purpose of ULA.”

Bass’ office said the letter was sent following a meeting she had with Rick Caruso, the billionaire real estate developer, former mayoral candidate and founder of Steadfast L.A., an organization focused on fire recovery.

How we got here

Any final tax exemption would still need further action from the City Council and Mayor’s Office to take effect.

The proposal cleared Monday’s committee in a 3-0 vote. But it needs further consideration by the full City Council before any ordinance is passed. Bass would then need to issue an executive directive with full details of the post-fire tax exemption.

This isn’t the first effort to cancel the “mansion tax” for Pacific Palisades homeowners. A state bill introduced days before the end of Sacramento’s legislative session would have carved out sales in the fire zone.

But the exemption would have only gone through if efforts to repeal the tax either failed to qualify for the ballot or were dropped by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, an anti-mansion tax group. The bill also would have sought to address concerns about depressed housing development in the city by lowering the tax on sales of recently constructed apartments.

Bass said she asked Sacramento lawmakers to shelve the bill so more amendments could be made in the upcoming legislative session.