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Law360 (July 2, 2020, 5:25 PM EDT ) The Brooklyn federal judge handling Uber, Lyft and other app-based drivers' legal battle for New York unemployment benefits appeared to take the drivers' side during a case hearing Thursday morning, as she repeatedly laid into the Empire State's arguments against immediate court intervention.
Over the course of the two-hour proceeding, U.S. District Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall pushed aside a set of New York's core defenses as "red herrings" and said it was "preposterous" that the state wouldn't disclose parts of the New York State Labor Department's application review process.
The drivers have asked the judge to force the department to immediately pay them unemployment insurance, which they say is months overdue because the NYSDOL illegally treats workers in the for-hire vehicle industry as independent contractors rather than employees.
The agency makes independent contractors prove their earnings rather than getting this data from their employers, a process the drivers say significantly slows the application review process.
While New York Assistant Attorney General C. Harris Dague conceded Thursday that there are some sticking points in the case, he said the drivers are fine for the time being because they're currently receiving payments under federal pandemic relief programs, including the CARES Act and the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation program.
Judge DeArcy Hall made clear early on that she wasn't buying that defense, as she called those payments "red herrings" that distract from New York's failure to quickly process the drivers' applications.
"I don't understand how it is that the court can simply ignore a failure with respect to [unemployment insurance] benefits because the DOL may have provided benefits under the emergency provisions that were set out in the CARES Act and the FPUC," she said.
Judge DeArcy Hall also took aim at New York's assertion that the NYSDOL can't disclose what efforts it may have made to secure drivers' wage information from Uber, Lyft and other app-based services.
"There's been no daylight provided to the court with respect to the conduct of the Department of Labor," she said. The state's court filings "suggest that somehow, no one can know this," she added. "I find that preposterous."
The attorney for New York agreed to get the court information by Monday on the NYSDOL's efforts to gather employee wage data from these driving services. A follow-on hearing on the drivers' push for immediate court action is slated for the next day.
The drivers are represented by Edward Josephson, Nicole Salk, Sarah E. Dranoff and Udoka Odoemene of Legal Services NYC and Zubin Soleimany of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance.
The state of New York is represented by Assistant Attorney General C. Harris Dague.
The case is Islam et al. v. Andrew Cuomo et al., case number 1:20-cv-02328, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
--Additional reporting by Braden Campbell, Danielle Nichole Smith and Adam Lidgett. Editing by Bruce Goldman.
For a reprint of this article, please contact reprints@law360.com.
