On June 14, the Massachusetts Supreme Court issued a ruling disqualifying the app-based drivers initiative backed by Lyft, Instacart, DoorDash, and Uber, from the November ballot.
A lawsuit was filed in January against Secretary of State William Galvin (D) and Attorney General Maura Healey (D) by several app-based drivers and voters arguing that the initiative should not have been approved for circulation because the petition violates the state’s constitutional requirement that subjects of an initiative are related or mutually dependent.
The court agreed with the plaintiffs. Justice Scott Kafker, who wrote the opinion for the court, said, “The petitions thus violate the related subjects requirement because they present voters with two substantively distinct policy decisions: one confined for the most part to the contract-based and voluntary relationship between app-based drivers and network companies; the other — couched in confusingly vague and open-ended provisions — apparently seeking to limit the network companies’ liability to third parties injured by app-based drivers’ tortious conduct.”
