On September 18, 2019, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed
into law sweeping legislation—Assembly Bill 5 (A.B.
5)—that will dramatically reshape the contours of
California's workforce and economy, and potentially reclassify
two million independent contractors—roughly 10% of the
state's workforce—as "employees" for purposes
of state labor laws. Across the Golden State, employers must now
examine their workplaces and determine whether and how to modify
their business structure to account for these extensive
changes.
How did we get here?
In 2018, in a decision known as Dynamex, the Supreme
Court of California held, for the first time, that the so-called
"ABC test" is the appropriate standard for determining
whether, under state wage and hour law, a worker is an employee
(and thus covered) or an independent contractor (outside the scope
of such laws). In doing so, the court upended almost three decades
of precedent and threw the status of millions of California
