Breaking News! In an incredible show of force, NYS Attorney General Letitia James, 11 labor unions and legal service and civil rights organizations, and four professors of constitutional, labor and contract law, along with NYTWA, filed Amicus briefs in federal court in support of the City of New York's appeal of a misguided injunction that put Local Law 52 on hold -leaving thousands of drivers without protections against unfair firings (deactivations) by Uber and Lyft, without notice, an independent appeal process or just cause reasoning.
The
@NewYorkStateAG argues in her Amicus that Local Law 52 builds on New York State's long history of protecting workers in specific sectors and that the court's ruling granting Uber and Lyft an injunction threatens the power of the city and state to enact sector-specific labor laws.
@LegalAidNYC and
@LSNYCnews argue in their Amicus (which AALDEF, LatinoJustice PRLDEF,
@MFJLegal,
@NELA_NewYork, and
@nylag signed onto) that Uber and Lyft's business model creates economic precarity for drivers that merits city regulation and that the corporations' arbitrary deactivations of drivers causes harm.
In the Amicus Brief filed by NYTWA,
@ALIGNny,
@Teamsters,
@UAWRegion9A, and
@workersjusticep we argue that wrongful and arbitrary deactivations devastate drivers, who are fired without adequate notice and no meaningful appeal process and that Local Law 52 will likely make NYC safer. The NYTWA brief also explains how Local Law 52 is just further progress on laws that already limit companies from firing workers such as anti-retaliation measures.
Professors
@veenadubal, Jennifer Gordon,
@profhuq, and
@ZephyrTeachout argue in their Amicus that Local Law 52 constitutes routine worker protection legislation and is similar to many existing laws restricting the termination and cancellation of economic relationships. Further, the court's interpretation of the Contract Clause of the U.S. constitution would produce absurd and dangerous results and would lead to judicial micromanaging of the state’s core legislative function of economic regulation.
Read the briefs here:
drive.google.com/drive/u/1/f…
Our fight is long from over, but today drivers are feeling the solidarity of Attorney General Letitia James and our allies who joined us in standing up to corporations who seek to dominate workers and leave them in utter ruin. We won't allow Uber and Lyft to use their corporate influence to block the just cause protections that drivers need to survive.
The Judge's ruling is dangerous to the rights of all workers, and that's why a broad coalition of unions, legal service advocates and the attorney general are united to see it overturned.