The California Trucking Association last week filed a renewed preliminary injunction request against the state of California's AB 5 independent contractor law with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California.
The request follows a similar request by the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association filed last month. OOIDA, which is an intervenor in the case, has since withdrawn and resubmitted that request to reflect a new briefing schedule in the case.
In its new request filed Jan. 11, CTA claimed that the state “never articulated how a motor carrier can possibly satisfy” the law, particularly the “B” prong of the now-codified ABC test for independent contractor status, which requires that a worker performs work outside the usual course of the hiring company’s business.
[Related: AB 5 latest: OOIDA files for another injunction]
By enforcing the ABC test against motor carriers, CTA said California continues “to threaten irrevocable harm” to fleets and owner-operators who have built their businesses around the leased owner-operator model, codified in federal law in the Truth in Leasing regulations of the business-to-business relationship.
The same court in 2020 issued a preliminary injunction just before the AB 5 law took effect, concluding that CTA and others challenging the law were likely to prevail on the argument that the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act (FAAAA or F4A) preempted state law.
