Skip to main content

Lyft won’t shut down operations in California tonight after all

Lyft planned to shut down its operations in California on Thursday night in response to a state law that forces it to reclassify its drivers as employees, but an emergency stay granted by an appeals court judge means the app will remain live for now. 

The ridesharing company had planned to suspend the app at 11:59 p.m. PT due to the law that requires companies like Lyft and Uber to count contracted drivers as regular employees and provide them benefits.

Lyft and Uber had both threatened to shut down if their legal request blocking the law was not granted. 

Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images

An Uber spokesperson told Digital Trends it has nothing to share in regards to shutting down or not, but that they are working to keep their drivers on the road.

“The vast majority of drivers want to work independently, and we’ve already made significant changes to our app to ensure that remains the case under California law,” an Uber spokesperson said. “When over 3 million Californians are without a job, our elected leaders should be focused on creating work, not trying to shut down an entire industry during an economic depression.”

In its statement, Lyft said it has supported benefits like minimum earnings guarantees and health care subsidies while also advocating for “maintaining the flexibility and control that independent contractors enjoy.”

“This is something drivers have told us over and over again that they want,” Lyft said. “Instead, what Sacramento politicians are pushing is an employment model that 4 out of 5 drivers don’t support. This change would also necessitate an overhaul of the entire business model — it’s not a switch that can be flipped overnight.”

Uber and Lyft are both reportedly considering adopting a franchise business model that would license their brands to vehicle fleet operators. By adopting a model resembling an independently owned franchise, Uber and Lyft would not be in full control over their drivers. 

Uber and Lyft can’t classify their drivers in California as contractors under a new gig economy law known as Assembly Bill 5 that went into effect earlier this year. Under the new law, contractors are eligible for basic protections like minimum-wage requirements, health benefits, and Social Security. 

The companies are hoping to reverse the bill in November through a ballot initiative known as Proposition 22. In its statement, Lyft pushed riders to support Proposition 22. “We believe voters should decide,” the company said.

Editors' Recommendations

Allison Matyus
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Allison Matyus is a general news reporter at Digital Trends. She covers any and all tech news, including issues around social…
We finally know the price of Asus’ most powerful gaming NUC
The Asus ROG NUC on a desk surrounded by three monitors.

The first Asus ROG NUC (Next Unit of Computing) model is just around the corner. The small form factor PC is now up for pre-order at a German retailer, and although it's powerful enough to rival some of the best laptops, it costs more than many comparable models -- and you'll still have to pay extra for a monitor.

Asus' first take on Intel's portable PC contains a lot of compute power in a small chassis. Although there are a few configurations of the PC, the one that was spotted up for sale ahead of time comes with Intel's latest Meteor Lake-H CPU, the Core Ultra 9 185H, which sports 16 cores and 22 threads and can be boosted to run at up to 5.1GHz, all with a thermal design power (TDP) of 45 watts. However, Asus allows overclocking, meaning that the CPU can run at up to 65 watts instead.

Read more
YouTube tells creators to start labeling ‘realistic’ AI content
YouTube on Roku.

YouTube is taking steps to try to help viewers better understand if what they’re watching has been created, whether completely or in part, by generative AI.

“Generative AI is transforming the ways creators express themselves -- from storyboarding ideas to experimenting with tools that enhance the creative process,” YouTube said in a message shared on Monday. “But viewers increasingly want more transparency about whether the content they’re seeing is altered or synthetic.”

Read more
AMD is making the CPU more and more obsolete in gaming
A demo of AMD GPU work graphs featuring in-game scenery including a castle and a town.

At GDC 2024, AMD just expanded on Microsoft's recently announced Work Graphs API, and a quick demo shows just how powerful the new tech can be for gaming performance. AMD's iteration moves draw calls and mesh nodes from the CPU to the GPU, cutting back on the time it takes to execute these tasks. As a result, AMD found that there was a massive performance improvement -- rendering time saw a 64% boost -- when using Work Graphs with mesh shaders.

Microsoft introduced Work Graphs as a way to streamline processes both in gaming and in productivity, all by giving the GPU the power to schedule and execute tasks without first communicating with the CPU. It's built into the Direct3D 12 API and it can reduce bottlenecks and improve gaming performance in 3D games.

Read more