The Sneaky Tactic That Makes Uber and Lyft Worse for Everyone
Last year, former U.S. Circuit Court Judge David Tatel, who is blind, was denied a Lyft ride to court when a driver refused to accept his guide dog.
It should not be necessary to state this, but: People who are blind deserve full access to trains, airplanes, and other transportation services—like Uber and Lyft—that are open to the general public. Our shared values of inclusion and human decency demand it, and federal, state, and local laws prohibit discrimination based on disability status.
But Uber and Lyft have a history of failing to prevent discrimination against people with disabilities, including those with guide dogs . On Tuesday, which was Blind Americans Equality Day , the National Federation of the Blind held a rally at the San Francisco headquarters of Uber and Lyft to highlight this persistent discrimination and to call for change, with participants accompanied by guide dogs demanding that companies "Respect Our Right to Ride."
The two corporations have been sued for various types of discrimination against people with disabilities a number of times , including by the Department of Justice, which reached a settlement with Lyft in 2020 and with Uber in 2022 . A survey released in May by Guide Dogs for the Blind found that 83 percent of respondents had experienced rideshare denials. A 2020 San Francisco County report found that less than half of all wheelchair-accessible vehicle trip requests to Uber and Lyft were served, despite a state program helping subsidize such trips. And some customers with disabilities have shared incidents on social media in which food delivery workers won't bring their order to their door.
Such discrimination is unacceptable and must stop. Uber and Lyft would like us to believe that it's a matter of a few rogue drivers who didn't get the memo. They want to pit struggling workers against customers with disabilities. But the corporations are the problem. In fact, their gig business model by its very nature makes this kind of discrimination far more likely to occur and persist.
Instead of following the same rules that every other employer must follow—from the diner on the corner to the megacorporation at your local mall—these gig companies refuse to treat their workers as employees. Rather, they engage in the fiction that each driver or delivery worker is running their very own totally independent car-driving or delivery business.
This model's harmful impact on workers has been well documented: low earnings , pay determined by mysterious algorithms , and virtually no help when they're injured or killed on the job . But gig companies' failure to abide by employment laws enables discrimination and other harms to riders.
For starters, the gig business model disincentivizes Uber and its peers from training and supervising their workforces in relation to discrimination. Because gig corporations insist they're not employers, they face a conundrum: They don't want the reputational harm caused by discrimination incidents, but they also want an arm's-length relationship with their workforce, and taking steps to meaningfully train workers and actually ensure access for all makes them look more like employers.
Indeed, when sued for discrimination involving riders with disabilities, Uber and Lyft have both stated that the Americans With Disabilities Act doesn't even apply to their operations. This is their explicit position in court filings the wider public is unlikely to see. When Uber was sued for discrimination by the National Federation of the Blind in 2014, the company's motion to dismiss repeatedly emphasized its role not as drivers' employer but instead as a mere "conduit between passengers looking for transportation and transportation providers looking for passengers." Uber maintained this same position about disability discrimination in a 2022 case by the U.S. Department of Justice, and Lyft has made similar arguments . Imagine airlines trying this line: "Anti-discrimination laws don't apply to us because we don't hire pilots; we just connect them with passengers who want to go someplace."
The companies' deeply problematic assertion that the ADA doesn't apply to them is one of many examples of gig corporations' belief that they should be exempt from our most basic laws related to the marketplace and to work. The problem goes deeper still. Gig companies' business model involves transferring immense financial risk to their workers. Workers put in excessive amounts of uncompensated time when they don't have passengers—it can be around 40 percent of work time for Uber and Lyft drivers. And with few exceptions, drivers are responsible for all vehicle expenses, with no reimbursement whatsoever: gas, maintenance, cleaning, insurance. If gas prices go up, that's on the worker. If a worker gets a ticket for idling while bringing food upstairs to the home of a person with limited mobility, that ticket is paid out of the worker's own pocket. If a given passenger requires more time than the average rider, Uber and Lyft won't pay a nickel more; the driver alone is on the hook.
The companies, then, have created this lose-lose situation in which grossly underpaid workers end up denying services urgently needed by people with disabilities (and required by law), like accommodating wheelchair users and guide dogs. If drivers and delivery workers were—as employees are—paid for all hours worked, paid minimum wage and overtime, and compensated for all work-related expenses, the overarching incentives would be different. To be sure, proper classification alone wouldn't eradicate all discrimination, as people whose wheelchairs have been destroyed during air travel can attest. But it would go a long way toward improving the current situation.
The question of Uber and Lyft drivers' employment status has been fought over for the past decade, and unfortunately, corporate money has typically determined policy outcomes . People with disabilities shouldn't have to wait until the broader issue of classification is ultimately resolved. Uber and Lyft should take action and ensure that people with disabilities have access to their services now. But in doing so, the corporations should take responsibility for additional costs, rather than unilaterally foisting them on poorly paid workers .
Uber and Lyft may portray drivers who refuse to accept guide dogs as isolated bad apples, but truly solving this problem will be challenging as long as these corporations continue to disclaim responsibility for the people who perform their core work.
