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SEATTLE (CN) — Global ride-hailing and delivery platform Uber accused Seattle in a lawsuit of violating its constitutional rights with an ordinance intended to provide protections for gig workers.
The company says Seattle’s ordinance “seeks to impose an unconstitutional regime of compelled speech, forced association, indecipherable government mandate, sweeping disclosure demand and impairment of contract rights on companies like Uber,” it wrote in a 35-page complaint filed in the U.S. District Court’s Western District of Washington of Seattle.
The Seattle City Council passed the App-Based Worker Deactivation Rights Ordinance in August 2023 with a 6-2 vote. It is set to take effect on Jan. 1.
The ordinance specifically focuses on deactivations — when a driver or courier’s account is permanently or temporarily taken offline — and prohibits companies with 250 or more app-based employees worldwide from deactivating workers without having a clear policy and explanation behind the action.
Uber says the changes it will have to make to its deactivation policies to comply with the ordinance violate its First Amendment rights to free speech and freedom of association.
“The ordinance compels Uber to speak — and to voice the city’s views, not Uber’s own, even when those views would suggest to the world that Uber is not fully committed to the quality of the services provided on its own platform, or worse, to safety and privacy,” the company writes.
The company further accuses the ordinance of violating the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, arguing that the ordinance’s language requiring the company to allow only deactivations “reasonably related” to its “safe and efficient operations” is impermissibly vague.
The company says in the suit filed late Wednesday that it shares the city’s goal of keeping workers on its platform.
“But in some cases, based on its experience, judgment, and values, Uber has struck a balance different from the one the city prefers,” Uber wrote.
The company says the two most common factors behind deactivations are failed background checks and issues with documentation it requires its couriers to submit. It also deactivates accounts with consistently low consumer ratings, which it says “are often correlated with safety, fraud, misconduct and other quality issues,” the company writes in the complaint.
Under Seattle’s ordinance, Uber claims it will be forced to forgo its safety and customer experience measures to comply.
“The ordinance appears to require Uber to adopt a deactivation policy endorsing the view that systematically refusing or canceling orders from consumers in certain locations or with certain protected characteristics is not discriminatory conduct worthy of deactivation,” Uber writes. “Such a policy, though, is fundamentally inconsistent with Uber’s mission and values.”
The company also takes issue with the ordinance’s requirement that companies provide workers with an explanation behind a deactivation, including the records it used to form its decision. The company says this will force it to choose between disclosing sensitive customer information or allow couriers whose accounts would otherwise be deactivated to continue working.
For example, the company writes, a courier who assaulted a customer and had their account deactivated would be shown those records detailing the complaint and the customer could face retaliation.
Uber also opposes the ordinance’s requirement that it turn over its records related to deactivations to the city’s Office of Labor Standards.
“The ordinance does not provide for any sort of judicial process before Uber may be forced to turn over these records,” the company writes.
An Uber spokesperson said the company tried to engage with the city on the ordinance in the time since it was passed, but their concerns were ignored.
“As a result, the final version of this law undermines our safety standards and raises significant privacy issues for our users—issues we cannot overlook,” the Uber spokesperson said. “The decision to file suit was not made lightly, and we remain hopeful that the city will work with us on an acceptable path forward.”
Uber is represented by Alexander Cave of Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C. and the Davis Wright Tremaine firm in Seattle.
The Seattle City Attorney’s Office declined to provide a comment for this story.
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