Hacker News Reader

Comment by CSMastermind | Hacker News Reader

https://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/documents/A163655.PDF

^ Actual court ruling which is linked in the article itself.

I find the article's headline misleading. The court ruled that a proposition that was passed by voters in California which classified these drivers as contractors was mostly constitutional and would be allowed to have the effect of law, noting that California's legislative branch was free to change the law if they had the requisite votes to do so.

It wasn't the court, but California voters, which decided these workers are contractors. The court simply ruled that this is something voters are allowed to decide (and that lawmakers can change if they so choose).

View on HN

> I find the article's headline misleading.

I see Uber stock is up 6% pre-market. That suggests to me investors thinks Uber's liabilities are reduced as a result of this ruling.

The fight over contractor status was versus regular employee status, which would require providing benefits. So, market rejoice, these driver folks are on their own.

Editorializing a bit, but CA referendums are so silly. I was asked to vote to resolve an employee/employer dispute in kidney dialysis centers. There's so many of those types of things.

So, crazy enough, I know the head lobbyist for the group that was fighting against that kidney dialysis thing.

It's been struck down three times and, according to her heavily biased opinion, would seriously adversely affect access and choice. The company spent something like several hundred million dollars fighting that proposition and two before it.

Crazy that one special interest can get some signatures to fight for something like that with the only real goal to boost their profits well another special interest fights against it to save theirs.

Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of dollars are burned in the process.

> hundreds of millions of dollars are burned in the process

Not burned. Those dollars went to lawyers, advertising platforms, etc.

So... parasites. Burned sounds appropriate

Which produces as much value, in human terms, as burning them. Possibly less. I think the metaphor stands.

> It's been struck down three times and, according to her heavily biased opinion, would seriously adversely affect access and choice. The company spent something like several hundred million dollars fighting that proposition and two before it.

All because the (licensed) employees wanted safer conditions for their patients?

Something I find suspect is how spending hundreds of millions is profitable unless you're raking in many times that amount per year.

I suspect they're guarding massive profits as opposed to advocating for patient access and choice

it's a good point. From my understanding it was the difference between having a business and not having a business.

So, more a fight for survival than a fight for just profitability.

Though my memory is fuzzy… We were talking about this over Thanksgiving dinner after several drinks and haven't discussed it since

I am so tired of the kidney dialysis centers voting. I think I vote on one every time I've voted for at least 4-5 years

Labor unions seem to put that kidney dialysis measure on the ballot for every election, then they are outspent by more than 100-to-1 by the kidney dialysis companies on TV ads, and the measures never pass.

Money wins, and the unions could spend more but they don't in this case.

I don't see any of the propaganda on this either way. Based purely on what I read on the ballot and in the state issued supplementary booklet (I forget what it's actually titled) I did not read any compelling argument to vote for this.

Remember, unions are fundamentally limited to a warchest of some fraction of their memberships pooled income, while companies are propped up by investors YOLO'ing.

Unions by defintion have to focus on doing more outreach in ways that don't translate to throwing money at a problem and making it go away. Capital wielders will always have the advantage in that department.

And you will be asked to vote on the kidney dialysis thing again and again. It's already been on the ballot 3-4 times. The voting public doesn't care for it and it's been soundly defeated each time.

I'm not really sure who's bankrolling it.

That suggests to me, a lot of investors are using the wrong strategy of trying to time the market.

Lawmakers cannot change if they so choose. Propositions amend the constitution of California. They can modify it, but they have to honor the rule itself and cannot simply remove it or abrogate it through this alteration.

> Legislature can amend Proposition 22’s provisions with a statute passed by a seven-eighths majority in both houses, so long as the statute is “consistent with, and furthers the purpose of,” the initiative and the Legislature complies with certain procedural requirements

> Lawmakers cannot change if they so choose... They can modify it,

You know here all this time I thought that "modify" is a synonym of "change". So can lawmakers modify it or can they not modify it?

I read modifying it requires like super super majority like over 80% of approval from senate legislature, effectively it couldnt be done

So it is yes and no i guess, in theory yes, in practice better forget about it. This is state constitution, it isnt meant to be modified as someone pleases

Our State Constitution is modified frequently at the ballot box.

This one amendment to the law is just more difficult to amend than all the rest of the Constitution because it was designed specifically to be extremely difficult verging on impossible to amend but not technically impossible to amend as part of its text; and voters approved it with a far lower threshold than it would take for the legislature to modify it.

> This one amendment to the law is just more difficult to amend than all the rest of the Constitution

No, its not.

The Constitution can only be amended by a vote of the people (either by initiative or proposed by the legislature.)

This law can be amended by a vote of the people (either by initiative or proposed by the legislature), or it can be amended within certain bounds by a 7/8 vote of each house of the State Legislature without a vote of the people. It is, strictly, easier to amend than any part of the State Constitution.

On paper you are 100% correct that it is strictly speaking legally easier to amend this law; but in reality, clearing the majority necessary to amend our Constitution is politically a lower bar than getting 7/8 of the legislature to amend this particular law. We really do amend it regularly and most voters I talk to don’t put a whole lot of thought into whether it’s a constitutional amendment or a statute. If they’re for whatever it is, they’re for it, and if they’re against it, they’re against it. The mechanics matter to a minority of us.

> On paper you are 100% correct that it is strictly speaking legally easier to amend this law; but in reality, clearing the majority necessary to amend our Constitution is politically a lower bar than getting 7/8 of the legislature to amend this particular law.

Perhaps, but the comparison isn’t “7/8 of the legislature vs. a bare majority of the people” it is “7/8 of the legislature or a bare majority of the people vs. a bare majority of the people”.

It is absolutely not harder to amend Prop 22 than the State Constitution, or a normal initiative statute. It is easier. Perhaps only so slightly easier as to make no substantial difference, but your claim is that it is harder, and that is completely wrong. Even if it is not substantially easier, it is also not at all harder.

You know what? I’ll concede this one. Technically you’re correct, but I think we have a different perspective on which of these two is a lower bar to clear and that’s fine. Cheers!

change and modify some times have different meanings in legal systems and can apply to versioning of the laws (don't know if that is the case here)

as an example you might say Law X section 7 says Uber drivers are contractors.

In some systems a change would be to remove this provision or to say the opposite.

a modification might be to add:

The definition of contractor will follow the amended definition of contractor as in Law Y Section 9 - subsection Uber contractors.

So in essence, the law system uses different rules for language and applies it to everyone, but almost everyone uses language in a people way, not in a legal way. Sounds like a recipe for disaster.

In essence every complicated field has specialized jargon that differs from the common usage, also I'm not sure if this is the case in California legal system, I was just pointing out that some systems differentiate between what it means to change and modify - generally when discussions are made between experts in that system.

In many engineering contexts, modify and change would mean two distinct things. Of course, it's context dependent but:

- "Modify" this part on the widget: Please alter this part to function correctly.

- "Change" this part on the widget: Please replace this part with a new part so that the widget functions correctly.

e.g. if I modified a cover, it probably means I drilled an extra hole or something to make it fit.....if I changed the cover, it probably means that I found a new cover that had the right hole.

The one and only job of lawmakers is to create or change laws as they so choose.

Obviously lawmakers must still abide by laws in effect*, but they can absolutely change those laws if they have sufficient votes to do so.

Even the US Federal Constitution can be changed by lawmakers, nothing is off-limits with enough votes.

* Some countries suspend enforcement of laws within the physical space of legislative chambers. As an example, I understand over in Japan it's perfectly legal for a Diet member to murder someone in the Japanese Diet's legislative chamber because laws prohibiting murder aren't in effect in there. IANAL so I could be misled by urban legends.

> Even the US Federal Constitution can be changed by lawmakers

This really depends on how loosely you define "lawmakers."

The federal legislature cannot amend the Constitution by itself, as it requires a 2/3 supermajority of the House and Senate, 3/4 supermajority by the states, which are not what one would traditionally refer to as 'lawmakers' but I guess could colloquially be sort of.

There's of course the constitutional convention path, but that's even less kind-of-sort-of fitting any normal definition of "lawmaker."

3/4 of the States and each and every State makes its laws and approves (or not) amendments through their own legislatures which are by definition lawmakers.

Congress isn’t the only legitimate legislature in the United States.

> The federal legislature cannot amend the Constitution by itself, as it requires a 2/3 supermajority of the House and Senate, 3/4 supermajority by the states, which are not what one would traditionally refer to as ‘lawmakers’ but I guess could colloquially be sort of.

No, state legislators (and it is 3/4 of state legislatures that need to ratify) are absolutely, 100%, lawmakers. If one wants to differentiate federal from state lawmakers to refer specifically to either one, the appropriate adjective is used along with "lawmakers", but "lawmkers", without qualification, definitely encompasses both.

> there’s of course the constitutional convention path, but that’s even less kind-of-sort-of fitting any normal definition of “lawmaker.”

No, again, the convention is an alternative to Congress for proposing amendments, but they are still ratified by state legislatures, comprised of state legislators, who are exactly within the usual definition of “lawmkers” without further qualification. (And do so exactly as much as when the exact same group ratifies amendments proposed by the other mechanism, not “even less kind-of-sort-of”.)

> passed by a seven-eighths majority in both houses

Holy mother of supermajorities ...

What's the procedure for reversing a ballot measure? Can only be done via a different ballot measure?

thats why i almost always vote no on these now. its too hard to undo if there is unintended consequences or the vote was bought by some large company.

Yes, the people have primacy over the representative bodies, so usually a ballot measure can only be modified by a subsequent ballot measure. This one makes a special allowance for unilateral amendment, within certain bounds, by the legislature as well as being modifiable by a ballot measure (which can either be proposed by petition or by a simple majority of the legislature), and is therefore strictly (if only slightly) easier to modify than a normal ballot measure.

The purpose of these things is to overrule the representative legislature when it doesn't match the opinions of the people (who are the real legislators who have delegated power to the representatives). It would be foolish to permit your agents to overrule the principals. It is the sensible thing to do.

Yeah, it's a high bar to clear, but they didn't have to include that in the proposition. If they hadn't, then legislature would be entirely unable to modify it.

Think about that before getting all fired up about 7/8 - most ballot initiatives completely exempt themselves from legislative amendment. That's the default.

I am aware of that fact now, but it's not making it better

Correction: 2020 Proposition 22 was an initiative statute that modified the Business and Professions Code (https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayexpand...), not the California Constitution. And the clause that allowed amendments with 7/8 supermajority exists to make it easier to amend than if the clause did not exist, since by default initiatives can’t be modified by the legislature at all (Constitution Article II Sec 10(c) https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...)! It is common to choose a threshold above the known opposition (my earlier comment with more examples https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28259306), and 7/8 is above the 73% that voted for AB5 (https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billVotesClient.xht...).

> Propositions amend the constitution of California.

Initiate Constitutional Amendments do, Initiative Statutes do not. Prop 22 was an initiative statute, and as such did not amend the Constitution.

Nevertheless, because the legislative power resides in the people first and is delegated by them to the legislature to the extent that they have not themselves exercised it, an initiative statute, while subordinate to the State Constitution, cannot usually be altered by the legislature (the legislature can propose changes, but they must be passed by the people.) But, OTOH, Prop 22, as you note, contains a provision allowing a legislative hypermajority to amend it, and so can, in fact, be altered by the legislature unilaterally.

On the gripping hand, though, those unilateral alterations that the legislature can make are explicitly limited, and do not include making app-based drivers regular employees rather than contractors.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com