The California Supreme Court on Thursday upheld Proposition 22, the voter initiative that allows Uber, Lyft and other gig economy companies to classify drivers for their ride-hailing and delivery services as independent contractors rather than as employees.

In a unanimous decision released Thursday morning, the state’s top court rejected claims brought by a group of drivers and unions that the law is unconstitutional because it interferes with lawmakers’ authority over matters dealing with worker compensation.

The ruling, which was expected following a lopsided hearing in the case in May, marks the end of a years-long legal fight over Proposition 22, which essentially carved out a new classification for workers who are entitled to limited benefits but not the array of rights granted full-fledged employees.

Because the law has remained in effect throughout the legal process, the decision will not change how delivery and ride-hailing services operate in California. Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and other gig companies had argued their business models depended on the law being upheld and threatened to shut down in California if it was struck down.

The decision has sweeping implications for the million-plus people who drive for various app-based companies in California. Some of these workers have raised concerns over low wages, minimal workplace protections and exploitative practices they say they face. The decision also is likely to have ripple effects on drivers across the U.S., as Uber has pushed for laws similar to Proposition 22 in other states .

The decision Thursday falls in line with comments made by justices in May when they heard oral arguments on the constitutionality of the law. Their line of questioning suggested they were not persuaded by the argument that Proposition 22 should be overturned because it interferes with the state Legislature’s authority to provide workers’ compensation protections to drivers.

Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and other companies poured upward of $200 million into a campaign to sway voters in favor of Proposition 22 in 2020. It passed with 59% of the vote and went into effect soon after.

Under the law, drivers are considered to be their own employers, a designation that frees the companies they drive for from having to provide the full slate benefits that traditional employees in the state are entitled to, such as overtime, sick leave and a minimum wage.

The Service Employees International Union and a group of drivers first brought the lawsuit challenging Proposition 22 in January 2021, just after the law went into effect. They unsuccessfully sought to take the case directly to the California Supreme Court and were left to pursue the case in a lower court.

Then, in a sweeping decision in August 2021, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Frank Roesch ruled that Proposition 22 was unconstitutional and unenforceable. The law failed to pass constitutional muster, Roesch wrote, because it infringed on the power of the Legislature, explicitly granted by the state Constitution, to regulate compensation for workers’ injuries. “If the people wish to use their initiative power to restrict or qualify a ‘plenary’ and ‘unlimited’ power granted to the Legislature, they must first do so by initiative constitutional amendment, not by initiative statute,” the judge wrote. In March 2023, a split three-judge panel from a state appeals court largely reversed that ruling, finding the law did not impede the Legislature’s authority and upholding the legality of the law’s provision classifying drivers as contractors. Supporters of the law celebrated the ruling as a “historic victory for the nearly 1.4 million drivers who rely on the independence and flexibility of app-based work to earn income, and for the integrity of California’s initiative system.”

Journalist Javier Cabral wanted to test Google’s much-hyped, experimental artificial intelligence-powered search results. So he typed out a question about a topic he knew intimately: the Long Beach bakery Gusto Bread’s coffee.

In less than a second, Google’s AI summarized information about the bakery in a few sentences and bullet points. But according to Cabral, the summary wasn’t original — it appeared to be lifted from an article he wrote last year for the local food, community and culture publication L.A. Taco, where he serves as the editor in chief. For a previous story, he’d spent at least five days working on a feature about the bakery, arriving at 4 a.m. to report on the bread making process.

As Cabral saw it, the search giant’s AI was ripping him off.

“The average consumer that just wants to go check it out, they’re probably not going to read [the article] anymore” Cabral said in an interview. “When you break it down like that, it’s a little enraging for sure.”

The rise of AI is just the latest existential threat to news organizations such as Cabral’s, which are fighting to survive amid a rapidly changing media and information environment.

News outlets have struggled to attract subscribers and advertising dollars in the internet age. And social media platforms such as Facebook, which publishers depended on to get their content to a massive audience, have largely pivoted away from news. Now, with the growth of AI thanks to companies including Google, Microsoft and ChatGPT maker OpenAI, publishers fear catastrophic consequences will result from digital programs automatically scraping information from their archives and delivering it to audiences for free.

“There’s something that’s very fundamentally unfair about this,” said Danielle Coffey, president and chief executive of the News/Media Alliance, which represents publications including the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. “What will happen is there won’t be a business model for us in a scenario where they use our own work to compete with us, and that’s something we’re very worried about.”

Tech companies leading the charge on AI say their tools are not engaged in copyright infringement and can drive traffic to publishers.

Google said in a statement that it designed its AI Overviews — the summaries that appear when people enter search queries — to “provide a snapshot of relevant information from multiple web pages.” The companies also provide links with the summaries so people can learn more.

AI and machine learning could provide useful tools for publishers when doing research or creating reader recommendations. But for many journalistic outlets, the AI revolution represents yet another consequence of the tech behemoths becoming the middlemen between the content producers and their consumers, and then taking the spoils for themselves.

“For the past 20 years, big tech has dictated the business model for news by essentially mandating how news is distributed, either through search or social, and this has turned out to be pretty disastrous for most news organizations,” said Gabriel Kahn, a professor at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

L.A. Taco operates on a tight budget; its publisher doesn’t take a salary. The site makes most of its money through memberships, so if people are getting the information directly from Google instead of paying to read L.A. Taco’s articles, that’s a major problem. Above, a staff meeting at its Chinatown office.

(Zoe Cranfill / Los Angeles Times)

To respond to the problem, news organizations have taken dramatically different approaches. Some, including the Associated Press, the Financial Times and News Corp., the owner of the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones, have signed licensing deals to allow San Francisco-based OpenAI to use their content in exchange for payment. Vox Media and the Atlantic have also struck deals with the firm.

Others have taken their fights to court.

The New York Times in December sued OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging that both companies used its articles to train their digital assistants and share text of paywalled stories to its users without compensation. The newspaper estimated that those actions resulted in billions of dollars in damages.

Separately, last month Forbes threatened legal action against AI startup Perplexity, accusing it of plagiarism. After receiving Forbes’ letter, Perplexity said it changed the way it presented sources and adjusted the prompting for its AI models.

The company said it has been developing a revenue sharing program with publishers.

The New York Times said in its lawsuit that its battle against AI isn’t just about getting paid for content now; it’s about protecting the future of the journalism profession.

“With less revenue, news organizations will have fewer journalists able to dedicate time and resources to important, in-depth stories, which creates a risk that those stories will go untold,” the newspaper said in its lawsuit. “Less journalism will be produced, and the cost to society will be enormous.”

OpenAI said that the New York Times’ lawsuit was without merit and that it has been unable to reproduce examples the newspaper has cited of ChatGPT regurgitating paywalled articles. The company said publishers have a way to opt out of their sites being used to train AI tools. Microsoft did not respond to a request for comment.

The Associated Press, the Financial Times and News Corp., the owner of the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones, have signed licensing deals to allow San Francisco-based OpenAI to use their content in exchange for payment.

(Michael Dwyer / Associated Press)

“Microsoft and OpenAI have the process entirely backwards,” Davida Brook, a partner at law firm Susman Godfrey, which is representing the New York Times, said in a statement. “Neither The New York Times nor other creators should have to opt out of having their works stolen.”

The legal war is spreading. In April, eight publications owned by private equity firm Alden Global Capital also accused OpenAI and Microsoft of using and providing information from its news stories without payment.

In some cases, OpenAI’s chat tool provided incorrect information attributed to the publications, Frank Pine, executive editor for MediaNews Group and Tribune Publishing, said in a statement. For example, according to Pine, OpenAI said that the Mercury News recommended injecting disinfectants to treat COVID-19 and the Denver Post published research suggesting that smoking cures asthma. Neither publication has made such claims.

“[W]hen they’re not delivering the actual verbatim reporting of our hard-working journalists, they misattribute bogus information to our news publications, damaging our credibility,” Pine said.

OpenAI said that it was “not previously aware” of Alden’s concerns and that it is “actively engaged in constructive partnerships and conversations with many news organizations around the world to explore opportunities, discuss any concerns, and provide solutions.”

One such partnership is OpenAI’s recent deal with News Corp., which allows the tech company’s tools to display content from news outlets in response to user questions and access content from the Wall Street Journal, New York Post and publications in the United Kingdom and Australia to train its AI models. The deal was valued at more than $250 million over five years, according to the Wall Street Journal, which cited unnamed sources. News Corp and OpenAI declined to comment on the financial terms.

“This landmark accord is not an end, but the beginning of a beautiful friendship in which we are jointly committed to creating and delivering insight and integrity instantaneously,” Robert Thomson, chief executive of News Corp. said in a statement.

“We are committed to a thriving ecosystem of publishers and creators by making it easier for people to find their content through our tools,” OpenAI said in a statement.

Although OpenAI has cut deals with some publishers, the tech industry has argued that it should be able to train its AI models on content available online and bring up relevant information under the “fair use” doctrine, which allows for the limited reproduction of content without permission from the copyright holder.

“As long as these companies aren’t reproducing verbatim what these news sites are putting out, we believe they are well within their legal rights to offer this content to users,” said Chris MacKenzie, spokesman for Chamber of Progress, an industry group that represents companies including Google and Meta. “At the end of the day, it’s important to remember that nobody has a copyright on facts.”

But outlets including the New York Times reject such fair-use claims, arguing that in some cases the chatbots do reproduce their content, unfairly profiting from their thoroughly researched and fact-checked work. The situation is even more difficult for smaller outlets such as L.A. Taco, which can’t afford to sue OpenAI or develop their own AI platforms.

Located in L.A.’s Chinatown with four full-time workers and two part-timers, L.A. Taco operates on a tight budget; its publisher doesn’t take a salary. The site makes most of its money through memberships, so if people are getting the information directly from Google instead of paying to read L.A. Taco’s articles, that’s a major problem.

Legislation is another potential way to deal with big tech’s disruption of the journalism industry. The California News Publishers Assn., of which the Los Angeles Times is a member, is sponsoring a state bill known as the California Journalism Preservation Act, which would require digital advertising giants to pay news outlets for accessing their articles, either through a predetermined fee or through an amount set by arbitration. Most publishers would have to spend 70% of the funds received on journalists’ salaries. Another bill lawmakers are considering would tax large tech platforms for the data they collect from users and pump the money into news organizations by giving them a tax credit for employing full-time journalists.

“The way out of this is some type of regulation,” USC’s Kahn said. “Congress can’t get anything done so that basically gives these platforms free rein to do what they want with very little consequence.”

Times editorial library director Cary Schneider contributed to this report.

More than a million workers laboring in warehouses, kitchens, laundry rooms and other hot indoor settings across California are now protected by new safety measures that went into effect on Tuesday.

The indoor heat illness prevention rule, adopted by the standards board at the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health last month, regulates indoor workplaces that reach or surpass 82 degrees.

After years of delays, labor leaders celebrated the implementation of the rule. They had pressed in recent weeks for a mandated legal review of the rule to be expedited in order to get the protections in place as early on in the summer as possible.

“[W]e are relieved that the indoor heat protections are now finally in effect in California,” said Lorena Gonzalez, head of the California Labor Federation, in a statement Wednesday. “This long-overdue victory for workers cannot be overstated; these protections from extreme heat will save countless lives.”

Here’s what you should know about the new rule:

What are the new protections?

The new safety measures require employers to provide water, cooling areas and monitoring of workers for signs of heat illness whenever indoor workplace temperatures reach or surpass 82 degrees.

If temperatures climb to 87 degrees, or workers are required to work near hot equipment, employers must cool the work site. If doing so is not feasible, they must allow for more breaks, rotate workers out of hot environments and make other adjustments.

Designated cool-down areas are supposed to be as close as possible to where employees are working, and large enough that workers can sit normally without touching each other. They must be blocked from direct sunlight and shielded from heat sources, with adequate ventilation and cooling.

Drinking water must be available in multiple locations and should be “fresh, pure, suitably cool, and provided to workers free of charge,” the new rule says.

In guidance Cal/OSHA officials issued to employers, supervisors are advised to taste the water and pour it on their skin to check that it is adequate.

Employers should remind and encourage workers to drink water frequently in training sessions as well as throughout the work day, as workers “may not feel how urgently their bodies need water,” according to Cal/OSHA guidance.

Under the new rule, employers are required to allow workers to take cool-down rests if they feel they need to protect themselves from overheating.

“Waiting until symptoms appear before taking a cool-down rest may be too late,” Cal/OSHA guidance says.

More details about the indoor heat standard are available on Cal/OSHA’s website. The safeguards are similar to an existing rule establishing regulations for workers in outdoor settings.

Which workers are covered by the new rule?

The indoor heat standard applies to most workplaces. The state estimates the new rule will apply to about 1.4 million people who work indoors in conditions that can easily become exposed to extreme heat. Industries anticipated to be most affected include warehouses, manufacturing and restaurants.

The indoor heat rule does not apply to correctional staff or inmate workers in prisons, local detention facilities, and juvenile facilities.

The Department of Corrections and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration are in the process of consulting with worker advocates to create a separate indoor heat rule for these facilities. It is unclear how long it will take to develop and implement those protections.

The newly implemented rule also does not apply to employees who are working remotely from places not under the control of their employer.

What happens if an employer doesn’t follow the heat rule?

Workers who believe their workplaces are not adequately protecting them from extreme heat conditions can file a complaint with Cal/OSHA online or by calling (833) 579-0927.

It’s possible, however, that enforcement will be slow. California agencies responsible for enforcing labor laws have also been beset by inadequate staffing and claims of ineffectiveness.

Cal/OSHA is grappling with a 38% job vacancy rate and faced sharp criticism at a February hearing of the Assembly Committee on Labor and Employment, where farm workers testified that they’d been exposed to extreme heat and pesticides on the job.

“We will continue pushing Cal/OSHA to prioritize enforcement so that bad employers can’t get away with subjecting workers to life-threatening working conditions from indoor heat exposure,” said Gonzalez, the California Labor Federation president, in her Wednesday statement.

Are there similar protections at the federal level?

California in 2006 became the first state in the nation to establish permanent heat protections for outdoor workers and is among just a handful of states that have adopted indoor heat regulations.

There is no similar standard at the federal level, although the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration this month released details of its proposed rule to protect indoor and outdoor workers from high temperatures. The move is a major step forward, though the rule must receive feedback, among other steps, and likely will not be finalized for a while.

Louis Blumberg, a senior climate policy advisor at Climate Resolve, said California’s move to finally adopt the indoor heat standard means that it “automatically becomes a model, or at least a floor for federal agencies to consider and adopt.”

“This is very important as a labor issue. But it’s bigger than that. It’s an important step toward building climate resilience on a society-wide basis,” Blumberg said.

A federal standard would be particularly significant in states such as Florida and Texas — which have passed laws blocking cities or employers from establishing heat rules.