The California Trucking Association and two owner-operators are suing California over the state’s enforcement of its recently adopted test to determine whether a driver is an employee or an independent contractor, Overdrive Online reports.
The ABC test, which displaced the decades-old Borello standard for classifying workers, became the new standard via a California Supreme Court ruling in May.
According to the decision in Dynamex Operations West Inc. v. The Superior Court of Los Angeles County, workers can only be classified as independent contractors if all these conditions are met:
A. The worker is free from the control and direction of the hirer in connection with the performance of the work, both under the contract for the performance of the work and in fact; and
B. The worker performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business; and
C. The worker is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, or business of the same nature as that involved in the work performed.
The Oct. 25 lawsuit filed by California Trucking Association and two owner-operators seeks declaratory and injunctive relief in San Diego’s federal district court against the test, Overdrive reports. It is the second such lawsuit filed against the new standard. Earlier this year, the Western States Trucking Association, which represents interests in 11 states, sued California’s Department of Industrial Relations and the state’s attorney general in an effort to nullify the Dynamex ruling, Overdrive reports.
