Free Speech For Folks’s Authorized Director Courtney Hostetler and Counsel Amira Mattar printed an opinion essay in Mass Stay this week arguing that foreign-influenced firms shouldn’t be allowed to proceed with a misleading poll petition marketing campaign to exempt app-based drivers in MA from state protections.
They write:
The poll petition course of ensures that the individuals have lawmaking energy. They could create legal guidelines with out interference of hesitant, deadlocked, and compromised legislatures. However the individuals’s voice can’t be heard if rich particular pursuits – together with firms reliant on the backing of highly effective international entities – wield their unmatched monetary assets to push by means of petitions designed to deceive voters. Such maneuvering is unconstitutional.
Learn the total essay right here.
The essay was tailored from an amicus transient Free Speech For Folks filed in El Koussa v. Campbell in help of voters who’ve requested the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Courtroom to dam placement of 5 petitions on the November 2024 poll that may exclude app-based drivers in Massachusetts from state advantages and protections. The petitions have been launched by representatives of supply and transportation corporations, like Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, and Instacart. For the second time in three years, these corporations launched complicated, deceptive poll petitions that may strip their employees of priceless protections, and they’re prepared to spend large to garner public help to push these petitions onto the poll and into regulation.
In September 2023, representatives of supply and transportation corporations gathered signatures on 5 licensed petitions that exempt app-based drivers from being designated “workers” beneath Massachusetts regulation. All 5 petitions would exempt corporations from obligations and obligations in any other case required of employers beneath numerous chapters of Massachusetts regulation, costing their employees the safety of labor and social security internet legal guidelines. Three of these petitions provide in return solely subpar advantages that almost all drivers won’t qualify for. Two of them would offer their drivers with no advantages in any respect.
Learn extra concerning the amicus transient right here.
