In a victory for Uber, a federal court says drivers for the most part must resolve claims against the company individually, meaning they will have less leverage

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

In a victory for Uber, a federal appeals court says drivers for the most part have to resolve claims against the company individually and not through a class-action lawsuit.

The ruling by the ninth US circuit court of appeals on Wednesday came in a lawsuit by Uber drivers over the company’s background checks.

But it also affects drivers in a separate suit who accuse the ride-hailing service of exploiting them by treating them as independent contractors instead of employees. That’s because the arbitration clause the ruling upheld also applies to the vast majority of the roughly 380,000 drivers in that lawsuit.

Those drivers will now have less leverage against Uber as they pursue claims individually through arbitration instead of as a group through a class-action suit.

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Shannon Liss-Riordan, the plaintiff’s attorney, said on Wednesday that the decision was “not good for the class”, adding that it “endorsed Uber’s attempt to use its arbitration agreement to avoid a systemic challenge to its classification of drivers as employees through a global class action”.

But, she added, the fight was not over and there were still legal avenues that would be pursued.