3 ms·

I was explicitly not taking a position on the action itself. I’m honestly interested to see how this might open a company to litigation.

Digory 6y ago
1. A director looks more like an employee post-AB5, so it could be employment discrimination in California. 2. Independent contractors are protected against some race-based mistreatment in California. 3. The Unruh Act prohibits California businesses from race discrimination in offering “advantages” and “privileges” to non employees. 4. The next employee fired will have a much better case that their employment was terminated based on race — as Reddit openly does make decisions based on race. Granted, there are responses to all of these. Maybe even constitutional defenses. Maybe they’ll argue some other state’s laws apply, but all US states have pretty broad non discrimination laws — for a reason.
- jedberg 6y ago
  Section 2750.3 of the California Labor Code was added by AB5, and specifically excludes board members as employees.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - Digory 6y ago
    Like many things around AB5, that's not straightforward. They'd have to severely limit his actual involvement to avoid employee status. https://www.natlawreview.com/article/do-directors-avoid-employee-status-under-ab-5 https://www.natlawreview.com/article/do-directors-avoid-empl...
    - jedberg 6y ago
      A director of the company will easily pass the ABC test anyway. Especially given that he's a director at lots of other companies and has an existing full time job.
etrabroline 6y ago
In the past, SCOTUS has ruled that laws banning discrimination only grant new rights to the group the legislators were interested in helping. So anti-age discrimination laws only prevent discriminating against the old, not the young. If you understand the politics of race in America, it will actually not be very interesting to see how US courts will rule here.

Digory 6y ago

1. A director looks more like an employee post-AB5, so it could be employment discrimination in California. 2. Independent contractors are protected against some race-based mistreatment in California. 3. The Unruh Act prohibits California businesses from race discrimination in offering “advantages” and “privileges” to non employees. 4. The next employee fired will have a much better case that their employment was terminated based on race — as Reddit openly does make decisions based on race. Granted, there are responses to all of these. Maybe even constitutional defenses. Maybe they’ll argue some other state’s laws apply, but all US states have pretty broad non discrimination laws — for a reason.

jedberg 6y ago
Section 2750.3 of the California Labor Code was added by AB5, and specifically excludes board members as employees.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Digory 6y ago
  Like many things around AB5, that's not straightforward. They'd have to severely limit his actual involvement to avoid employee status. https://www.natlawreview.com/article/do-directors-avoid-employee-status-under-ab-5 https://www.natlawreview.com/article/do-directors-avoid-empl...
  - jedberg 6y ago
    A director of the company will easily pass the ABC test anyway. Especially given that he's a director at lots of other companies and has an existing full time job.

etrabroline 6y ago

In the past, SCOTUS has ruled that laws banning discrimination only grant new rights to the group the legislators were interested in helping. So anti-age discrimination laws only prevent discriminating against the old, not the young. If you understand the politics of race in America, it will actually not be very interesting to see how US courts will rule here.