The California Trucking Association, in response to a brief filed May 24 by the Solicitor General on behalf of the U.S. government, said the government’s stance laid out in the brief on California’s AB 5 law “is head-scratchingly wrong.”
CTA filed a supplemental brief on Friday, June 3, in response to the Solicitor General's brief. The Solicitor had argued last month that the Supreme Court should deny CTA’s request to review its case challenging AB 5, which would effectively ban the traditional leased owner-operator model in the state. CTA’s case claims that AB 5 is preempted by the 1994 Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act (FAAAA or F4A), which bars states from enacting laws that interfere with “routes, prices and services” of motor carriers.
The Solicitor General claimed that AB 5’s requirements are easily avoided, that the law may have no impact at all on carriers or owner-operators, and that there is no conflict in other circuit courts.
California’s Ninth Circuit Court reversed an injunction that exempted the trucking industry from AB 5, and CTA said the Ninth Circuit “affirmatively embraced its conflict with the First Circuit, acknowledging that” a statute in Massachusetts was “identical” to AB 5 but rejected a First Circuit ruling that the Ninth acknowledged was “contrary to our precedent.”
With respect to the Solicitor's claims that there is no conflict between the Ninth Circuit and other circuits' decisions, CTA said, “the government barely even attempts to deny the existence of a conflict between the Ninth and First Circuits. It asserts without explanation that the conflicting decisions are ‘case-specific,’ but it is hard to see much space between rulings that reach opposite conclusions about the validity of ‘identical’ state statutes.”
[Related: Solicitor General recommends Supreme Court deny review of AB 5 independent contractor law]
In debunking the government’s claims that AB 5’s requirements can be easily avoided and that there may be little impact on carriers and owner-operators, CTA cited the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, which said AB 5 “would cause motor carriers and owner-operators to bear the substantial, if not insurmountable, costs and burdens associated with shifting to an employer/employee business model.” To back up this point by OOIDA, CTA also cited Overdrive reporting from May 2021 that found even the prospect of AB 5 taking effect was already causing carriers to limit or abandon operations in California.
