By Jonathan Stempel<\/p>\n
NEW YORK, June 10 (Reuters) – Uber Technologies sued New York City to block enforcement of a new law that it said would unconstitutionally force \u200cit to keep drivers it does not want on its platform.<\/p>\n
In a complaint filed \u200clate on Tuesday night, Uber said the law against “wrongful deactivations” would improperly shield drivers who engage in dangerous, threatening \u200bor other inappropriate behavior, threatening public safety and causing “immediate and irreparable harm” by undermining the company’s reputation and goodwill.<\/p>\n
It said the law violates its free-speech and due-process rights under the U.S. Constitution, as well as New York’s state constitution. Uber is seeking a permanent injunction plus costs.<\/p>\n
A spokesman \u200cfor New York City’s law department \u2060said on Wednesday it is reviewing the complaint, which Uber filed in Manhattan federal court.<\/p>\n
Local Law 52 of 2026 would generally prevent large ride-sharing \u2060companies such as Uber and Lyft from dismissing drivers absent a “bona fide economic reason” or “just cause.”<\/p>\n
Dismissals would be permitted for account sharing, fraud, and “egregious misconduct” such as violence, sexual harassment or assault, and \u200bdiscrimination.<\/p>\n
The \u200blaw is slated to take effect on July 28, \u200bfollowing a 46-5 City Council vote \u200cin January.<\/p>\n
UBER WARNS OF ‘KANGAROO’ PROCEEDINGS<\/p>\n
Uber objected to being required to give 14 days’ notice before deactivations, saying this gave drivers a window for “retaliation” against passengers, and having to potentially rehire drivers from as early as 2019 who did not receive such notice.<\/p>\n
It said the law violates passengers’ privacy by requiring they disclose reports of alleged abuse to accused drivers.<\/p>\n
The San Francisco-based company \u200calso accused New York City of encouraging “kangaroo” proceedings requiring \u200bjudges, arbitrators and Department of Consumer and Worker Protection \u200bofficials to assume that deactivations are \u200bunjust, and shifting the burden to Uber to prove otherwise.<\/p>\n
“We are suing \u200cNew York City to block a reckless \u200bnew law that seeks to \u200bstrip our ability to immediately remove potentially dangerous drivers and fraudsters from our platform, creating an immediate threat to public safety,” Uber said in a statement.<\/p>\n
As of June \u200b1, Uber faced 3,571 lawsuits \u200cin nationwide litigation in San Francisco federal court accusing drivers of sexual misconduct.<\/p>\n
Lyft \u200bdid not immediately respond to requests for comment on its legal plans.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Jonathan \u200bStempel in New York; Editing by Matthew Lewis)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Jonathan Stempel NEW YORK, June 10 (Reuters) – Uber Technologies sued New York City to block enforcement…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":262054,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,24,56,63,65,64,51168,101732],"class_list":["post-262053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-uber-and-lyft","tag-uber-technologies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262053\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}