LAW & POLICY NOTE (March 2024)
Olson v. California—a case pending before the Ninth Circuit en banc in which plaintiffs Uber and Postmates have alleged that AB 5, California’s worker classification statute that codifies the ABC test, violates their equal protection rights—should be an easy case to resolve against plaintiffs under settled equal protection doctrine. But a panel of the Ninth Circuit found otherwise, in an astounding decision holding that the district court erred in dismissing plaintiffs’ equal protection claim. Plaintiffs’ claim essentially centers on one provision of the law, California Labor Code § 2777, known as the “referral agency exemption” from the ABC test. They object because they are carved out of this exemption and argue there is no rational basis for doing so. In this Note, we point out a key rationale for the distinctions drawn in the referral agency exemption that is clear on the face of the statute but has not received attention: the exemption’s carve-out, which excludes services provided in certain high hazard industries like the ones in which plaintiffs operate, is rationally related to one of AB 5’s stated purposes, namely, to protect workers when they are injured on the job from the harm of misclassification. This presents a straightforward path for the en banc Court to affirm dismissal of plaintiffs’ equal protection claim.
Our Golden Age: American Judaism, In Transition Join the Robbins Collection and Research Center and the Helen Diller Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies on Wednesday, April 3 in Room 110 at the Berkeley Law Building for the 2024 Robbins Lecture in Jewish Law, Thought, and Identity. The event will begin at 6:00pm with […]
The Robbins Collection and Berkeley Law welcomed Hannah Buxbaum as a Robbins Distinguished Visiting Professor in Spring 2024, where she taught an insightful course on Comparative Civil Litigation. “We focused on group litigation, and on the mechanisms (including the U.S.-style class action) that are used in different legal systems to achieve access to justice in […]
Former Robbins Postdoctoral and Associate Research Fellow Lena Salaymeh returned to UC Berkeley Law as a Robbins Visiting Professor for the Spring 2024 semester where she taught a popular course on Islamic Law. Speaking on her experience with the course, Salaymeh said “We began with introductory sessions on Islamic legal history and orthodox Islamic jurisprudence, […]
The Spokesman-Review, 03/02/2024
A U.N. human rights panel calls on the U.N. Environment Assembly to take on “forever chemicals” at a meeting in Nairobi, citing a North Carolina PFAS plant as an example of environmental negligence, Inside Climate News, 2/26/24
American chemical companies DuPont and Chemours have discharged toxic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) into the local environment, disregarding the rights and wellbeing of residents along the lower Cape Fear River in North Carolina, say U.N. experts.
United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, 2/21/24
The United Nations Human Rights Council issued a press statement calling out American chemical companies, Chemours and DuPont, for “disregarding the rights and wellbeing” of residents in North Carolina, who have been unknowingly exposed to extreme levels of toxic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) for decades.
Environmental Law Clinic, 2/21/24
Berkeley Law Professor, Pamela Samuelson, underscores the provisions of the EU’s Directive on Copyright for the Digital Single Market (DSM) and questions whether the new rules will have the desired effect.
Peter Menell, Berkeley Law Professor, analyzes the meaning and implications of the recent Supreme Court watershed fair use decision in Warhol v. Goldsmith.