San Francisco Deputy Public Defender Chesa Boudin, a proponent of reforming San Francisco's cash bail system, said, San Francisco Deputy Public Defender Chesa Boudin, a proponent of reforming San Francisco's cash bail system, said, "A client once told me that it's easier to get high than to get help in the City." (Photo: Jason Doiy/ALM)

San Francisco's district attorney has joined a growing chorus of California regulators and enforcement officials taking aim at gig economy companies for what they see as the misclassification of workers as contractors.

District Attorney Chesa Boudin on Tuesday announced a lawsuit against delivery company DoorDash and that his office would be seeking a court order finding that the company should be treating its couriers as employees.

"It shouldn't require that. It shouldn't be necessary. But sadly we know that it is," Boudin said in a press conference announcing the lawsuit.

In a prepared statement Max Rettig, DoorDash's global head of public policy said that during the pandemic the company has allowed Californians from all walks of life to find flexible earnings opportunities averaging a few hours a week.

"Today's action seeks to disrupt the essential services Dashers provide, stripping hundreds of thousands of students, teachers, parents, retirees and other Californians of valuable work opportunities, depriving local restaurants of desperately needed revenue, and making it more difficult for consumers to receive prepared food, groceries, and other essentials safely and reliably," Rettig said. "We will fight to continue providing Dashers the flexible earning opportunities they say they want in these challenging times."

The district attorney's action comes less than a week after the California Public Utilities Commission found that drivers working for Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc. should be classified as employees under California law.

It also follows another high-profile lawsuit filed last month against Uber and Lyft by California's attorney general and the city attorneys of Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco claiming that the companies misclassify drivers as contractors, allowing the companies to avoid millions of dollars in payroll taxes and skirt the responsibility to provide drivers benefits like health care, minimum wage and reimbursement for expenses. In that suit, Uber is represented by counsel at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, and Lyft is represented by Keker, Van Nest & Peters. Before the recent wave of government enforcement actions, both firms frequently represented gig companies in worker misclassification lawsuits brought on behalf of private plaintiffs.

The district attorney's office suit against DoorDash claims that the company's couriers, or "Dashers" in the parlance of the delivery company, are central to the business.

"Dashers do no perform work that is merely incidental to the company's business," the local prosecutors wrote. "Quite the opposite, "Dashers' deliveries are integral to DoorDash's business and their work is a regular and continuing par of the business."

Boudin announced Tuesday's lawsuit during a Zoom news conference alongside assistant district attorney Scott Stillman, the lead prosecutor on the case who joined the DA's office after practicing as plaintiff-side labor and employment partner at the Law Offices of McGuinn, Hillsman & Palefsky in San Francisco, and California Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, the author and sponsor of Assembly Bill 5, the state law passed last year codified the worker classification test laid out by the California Supreme Court in Dynamex Operations West v. Superior Court. The state law ensures access to paid sick leave, disability, family leave and unemployment insurance for workers who should be qualified as employees under the so-called ABC test.

Stillman, who was brought into the office to head its new crimes against workers unit, said Tuesday that he hoped the office's action against DoorDash would cause other companies to take a look at their own practices and make adjustments accordingly.

"We hope that they do so voluntarily so that we don't have to be here in the future related to other companies," he said. 

Boudin, however, said that he anticipated that Tuesday's action would be the "first of many" of its kind.  

Read more: 

The Gig Is Up? California AG, City Attorneys in LA, SF and San Diego Hit Uber and Lyft With Worker Misclassification Lawsuit

Gig-Worker Classification in the Age of COVID-19

'Their Day in Arbitration': Judge Compels Mass Arbitration Against DoorDash