Barrons-
San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against the food-delivery service DoorDash, asserting that the company “continues to illegally misclassify its delivery workers as independent contractors when, in fact, they are employees.”
The move is the latest in a series of legal skirmishes over California AB5 (Assembly Bill 5), a state law that went into effect Jan. 1 aimed at forcing gig economy companies to treat their drivers as employees rather than contractors. Last month, California state attorney general Xavier Beccera, together with San Francisco, San Diego and Los Angeles, filed a similar lawsuit against Uber (UBER) and Lyft (LYFT) seeking the ride-sharing services to force them to comply with the law.
Uber, Lyft and DoorDash, which is based in San Francisco, are the key drivers behind a November 2020 ballot proposition intended to exempt the gig economies from the provisions of AB5, an end-run to removing the law from the books. Last week, the California Public Utilities Commission ruled that AB5 applies to ride-sharing services, a decision that in theory could result in the two companies losing their right to operate in the state.
The California Right 