By Jonathan Stempel<\/p>\n
NEW YORK, June 11 (Reuters) – Lyft joined Uber Technologies in suing New York City to block a new law they said would \u200cforce them to keep bad drivers who threaten public and passenger safety on \u200ctheir platforms.<\/p>\n
The Lyft lawsuit was filed late Wednesday in Manhattan federal court, 24 hours after Uber sued.<\/p>\n
Both \u200bcompanies are challenging Local Law 52 of 2026, which generally prevents large ride-sharing companies from swiftly dismissing drivers absent a “bona fide economic reason” or “just cause.”<\/p>\n
The companies said the law targeting “wrongful deactivations” violated their due process and free speech rights under the U.S. Constitution.<\/p>\n
They also said the \u200claw threatened irreparable harm by \u2060undermining their reputation and goodwill while keeping unsafe drivers, including those accused of sexual misconduct, on the road.<\/p>\n
Lyft called the law “hazardous” and Uber \u2060called it “reckless.” The law would take effect on July 28, after the City Council in January overwhelmingly overrode former Mayor Eric Adams’ veto.<\/p>\n
A spokesman for New York City’s law department \u200bsaid on \u200bThursday it is reviewing both cases.<\/p>\n
Uber and \u200bLyft, both based in San Francisco, \u200chave faced criticism that they don’t do enough to stop drivers who abuse passengers or commit fraud.<\/p>\n
As of June 1, Uber faced 3,571 lawsuits and Lyft faced 54 lawsuits in nationwide litigation in San Francisco federal court accusing drivers of sexual misconduct.<\/p>\n
In challenging the New York City law, Lyft and Uber objected to requirements that they give \u200cdrivers 14 days’ notice before letting them go, and \u200bpotentially rehire drivers deactivated since 2019 solely because \u200bthey did not receive such notice.<\/p>\n
They \u200balso objected on privacy grounds to requiring passengers to detail alleged \u200cmisconduct to accused drivers, and objected to \u200ba heightened burden of \u200bproof when defending against drivers who challenge their deactivations in court or arbitration.<\/p>\n
City Council Speaker Julie Menin and Council Member Shekar Krishnan, the law’s main sponsor, \u200bsaid they looked forward \u200cto the law being upheld in court, and that the council will “fight to \u200bensure all app-based drivers have basic due process protections.”<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel \u200bin New York; Editing by Mark Porter)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Jonathan Stempel NEW YORK, June 11 (Reuters) – Lyft joined Uber Technologies in suing New York City…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":860133,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,5310,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,12589,247246,67,586,132,5230,350849,68,2969],"class_list":["post-860132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-city-council","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-sexual-misconduct","tag-uber-technologies","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-unsafe-drivers","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=860132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860132\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/860133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=860132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=860132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=860132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}