Press Release

For Immediate Release

OOIDA supports continued challenge to AB5

The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association said in an amicus brief that the California AB5 legislation will cause immediate and irreparable harm to thousands of truckers. The brief was filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals in the Ninth Circuit in support of the California Trucking Association’s petition for a rehearing before all the judges.

The CTA had asked the court in May of this year to review a ruling that the state worker classification law is not preempted by federal law.

OOIDA says that AB5 would eliminate a long-established business model into which hundreds of thousands of independent contractors have invested their blood, sweat and treasure to create their own businesses and be their own bosses.

In April of this year, a panel of judges ruled 2-1 that California’s AB5 is generally applicable labor law and called for the removal of a preliminary injunction again enforcing the state law on motor carriers. If the petition for a rehearing en banc is granted then a full panel of judges of the 9th Circuit would hear the case.

CTA holds that AB5 would force the end of the trucking industry’s owner-operator model and would be in violation of the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization (F4A) which prevents states from enforcing a law or regulation to a price, route or service of motor carriers.

OOIDA agrees that the provision of AB5, the ABC test, means that owner-operators must either become employee drivers or give up the businesses they have built or give up all business opportunities that might take them to California.