Mass. high court hears challenges to gig worker ballot measures
(Reuters) — Massachusetts's highest court on Monday weighed whether ballot proposals that would redefine the relationship between app-based companies such as Uber Technologies and Lyft and their drivers should be allowed to go before voters in November.
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court justices expressed concern, during oral arguments in Boston, over parts of an industry-supported group's proposal to ask voters to affirm that under state law, drivers are independent contractors with some new benefits but cannot be considered company employees.
But the six justices appeared unlikely to fully embrace a labor-backed coalition's argument that the proposal runs afoul of the state's constitution by broadly carving out the drivers from a “laundry list” of unrelated worker protection laws.
Jennifer Grace Miller, a lawyer for the measure's opponents, said voters would be asked to weigh in on not one policy question but a series of separate areas of employment law that could not legally be bundled together for their consideration.
The justices appeared likely to reject a conservative group's argument that the state attorney general wrongly certified a competing measure for inclusion on the ballot. That measure, backed by the Service Employees International Union's Local 32BJ, would ask voters to allow Uber and Lyft drivers to unionize under state oversight.
