The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a challenge Tuesday to a California law that classifies political signature-gathering “doorknockers” as employees entitled to payment of wages by the companies that hired them. It is at least the third time that the court has left the law intact.
The 2019 law, AB5, defines workers as employees rather than independent contractors if they are in the same business as the hiring company, or the company controls their activity. Unlike contractors, employees must be paid at least minimum wages and overtime, must be reimbursed for work expenses and are entitled to workers’ compensation benefits when they are disabled by illness or injury.
Drivers for ride-hailing companies such as Uber and Lyft were classified as employees under AB5 before the companies sponsored a 2020 ballot measure, Proposition 22, that defined the drivers as contractors. Prop. 22, approved by nearly 60% of the voters, is being challenged in state courts.
In another case last year, the Supreme Court rejected a challenge to AB5 by hundreds of freelance journalists and photographers who said companies were unwilling to hire them because the law classified them as employees rather than contractors. The justices left intact lower-court rulings that said the state law regulates economic activity and does not interfere with freedom of speech or the press.
The court has also rejected a suit by trucking companies contesting the classification of truck owner operators as employees under AB5.
California’s employment rules have also been raised as an issue by business groups opposing Julie Su, a former California labor commissioner now seeking Senate confirmation as President Biden’s nominee to head the U.S. Department of Labor.
Tuesday’s case involved a political nonprofit called Mobilize the Message and an affiliated company that hired canvassers to knock on doors and set up stations in public to collect signatures for proposed ballot measures. The Florida-based organization stopped doing business in California after AB5 took effect and filed suit contending the law violated freedom of speech.
The suit noted that newspaper carriers are not classified as employees under AB5. Neither are product sellers defined by law as “direct-sales salespersons,” who visit prospective customers’ homes to demonstrate their products, or who sell goods for commission from customers who then resell them.
“California’s discrimination against political speech silences” Mobilize the Message and its affiliates, their attorney, Alan Gura of the Institute for Free Speech, a nonprofit opposing government regulation of political campaigns, argued in a Supreme Court filing.
Under the California law, Gura wrote, “speakers performing identical tasks and providing identical services nonetheless play different economic roles based solely on their speech’s distinct commercial or political messages.”
Federal courts in California disagreed. AB5 “does not target certain types of speech” and applies to all economic activity in the state, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said in an October ruling upholding a federal judge’s refusal to set the law aside or grant an exemption to the challengers.
The classifications of newspaper carriers and direct salespersons as contractors “do not depend on the communicative content, if any, conveyed by the workers but rather on the workers’ occupations,” Joan Ericksen, a federal judge from Minnesota temporarily assigned to the appeals court, said in the 2-1 ruling.
Ericksen, an appointee of President George W. Bush, was joined by Judge Andrew Hurwitz, appointed by President Barack Obama. In dissent, Lawrence VanDyke, an appointee of President Donald Trump, said the workers’ classifications “are directly defined by the messages those workers communicate” and therefore violate the companies’ freedom of speech.
Direct salespersons are classified differently than campaign canvassers under AB5 “because one is selling a vacuum cleaner, while the other is selling a political idea,” VanDyke wrote.
But the full Ninth Circuit court denied a rehearing of the case, and on Tuesday the Supreme Court denied review, without any comment or indication of a dissenting vote.
Attorney General Rob Bonta welcomed the court’s action. “We’ll continue to defend laws that are designed to protect workers and ensure fair labor and business practices,” Bonta’s office said.
Gura could not be reached for comment.
The case is Mobilize the Message v. Bonta, 22-865.
Reach Bob Egelko: begelko@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @BobEgelko
