Lyft has agreed to pay $272,500,000 to settle California wage-theft and misclassification claims covering drivers who worked between April 5, 2016 and December 15, 2020. Roughly 87% is reserved for drivers. A judge must still approve the proposed settlement at a hearing set for Oct 29, 2026.

How did drivers make this happen?

After AB 5 (the legislation that made it harder for companies to misclassify drivers) became law but companies like Uber and Lyft and others did not comply, SEIU, drivers, and other labor unions pushed to hold the companies accountable:

• We met with city attorneys and other state officials to urge them to investigate Uber and Lyft’s misclassification of drivers and to pursue claims. 
• We supported drivers to file claims with the Labor Commissioner for wages owed to them under AB 5.
• After the city attorneys and Attorney General filed the lawsuit, SEIU helped connect them to drivers who were willing to provide evidence and to sign declarations to support the lawsuit. 
• SEIU and other labor and driver organizations coordinated to file joint amicus briefs in support of the case.

What exactly was settled?

Four separate lawsuits against Lyft, Inc., all claiming Lyft misclassified California drivers as independent contractors instead of employees. They were combined into one coordinated case in San Francisco Superior Court (JCCP No. 5179) before Judge Ethan P. Schulman.

The four plaintiffs were:

• The People of the State of California — the State Attorney General plus the City Attorneys of Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco, who sued on May 5, 2020
• The Labor Commissioner’s Office (LCO) — sued August 5, 2020, carrying forward the wage claims drivers had filed
• Brandon Olson — a driver suing under the Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA), filed May 25, 2018
• Million Seifu — a second PAGA driver-plaintiff, filed July 5, 2018

The claims in these cases were that Lyft denied drivers minimum wages and overtime, rest-break premiums, reimbursement for gas, mileage and phone costs, accurate wage statements, timely wage payments and paid sick leave.

Lyft is paying $272,500,000 and admitting no wrongdoing. The settlement agreement states explicitly that it is not an admission that drivers ever were employees.

This is not final yet. A judge must still approve the proposed settlement at a hearing set for Oct 29, 2026.

Am I covered?

The settlement uses several different terms regarding who is covered and how:

Covered Driver — anyone who gave at least one ride that started or ended in California using the Lyft platform between April 5, 2016 and December 15, 2020. 

Eligible Driver — a Covered Driver who will actually receive money. You are an Eligible Driver if either:

1. You drove at least a minimum number of hours during that period, or
2. You are a Berman Claimant — a driver whose individual wage claim against Lyft was pending with the Labor Commissioner (LC) when the LC filed suit on August 5, 2020. The Labor Commissioner says there are more than 1,600 of these drivers.

The minimum-hours threshold has not been set yet. The agreement leaves it to the People (CA AG and City Attorneys) and the Labor Commissioner to decide after Lyft hands over specific data about drivers: names, contact info, SSNs where known, and each Covered Driver’s weekly P2/P3 hours and miles. Lyft is required to provide that data to the settlement administrator within 75 days of August 12, 2026, which will land on October 26, 2026. Until the threshold is announced, no one can tell a driver whether they qualify.

What is a “Berman claimant”?

A Berman hearing is California’s free wage-claim process. If an employer owes you money, you do not have to hire a lawyer or sue. You fill out a form with the Labor Commissioner’s Office, pay nothing, and a deputy labor commissioner holds an informal hearing and can order the employer to pay. It is named after the legislator who wrote the law that created it. Think of it as small claims court for wages, run by the state, free.

In 2020, drivers used it as a tool in the fight against Lyft and Uber’s exploitation. AB 5 had just taken effect, and the companies were ignoring it. AB 5 was the law that said a company had to treat you as an employee unless it could prove you were free from its control, doing work outside its core business, and running your own independent trade — a test Uber and Lyft could not meet for drivers. They kept classifying drivers as contractors anyway, which is what these lawsuits are about, until Proposition 22 carved app-based drivers out of AB 5 on December 16, 2020 — the reason this settlement stops the day before.

Rather than wait for the state to act, drivers filed wage claims by the thousands— roughly 5,000 against Uber and Lyft combined, totaling more than $1.3 billion.

On August 5, 2020 the Labor Commissioner sued both companies on behalf of all drivers. She then took those individual claims into her own case, and drivers received a letter explaining it.

So, in this settlement, a “Berman Claimant” means: a driver whose individual wage claim against Lyft was still pending with the Labor Commissioner on August 5, 2020, when she filed suit. The Labor Commissioner says there are more than 1,600 of them.

Am I one? If you personally filled out and filed a wage claim against Lyft with the state Labor Commissioner in 2020, you are probably a Berman Claimant. You do not need to prove it yourself — the Labor Commissioner has the records and will identify you. But if you kept any paperwork, including the August 2020 letter, hold onto it.

Why it matters so much: Berman Claimants are the only drivers getting a share of a $5,450,000 set-aside, and the only drivers whose miles are counted twice. A Berman Claimant and a non-claimant who drove identical miles will not receive identical checks. The Berman Claimant will receive roughly double, plus a slice of the set-aside.

That gap exists because those drivers put their names on a government form when there was no settlement in sight and no guarantee of anything.

What if I also drove for Uber?

This settlement is Lyft only. It expressly does not touch the claims in the same coordinated case against Uber Technologies, Rasier, LLC, Rasier-CA, LLC, Portier, LLC, Uber USA, LLC or Xchange Leasing, LLC. Those remain in litigation.

How much will I get?

The formula

After the Berman Claimants’ set-aside is paid out (see below), the rest of the Driver Compensation Fund is divided among Eligible Drivers in proportion to total P2 and P3 miles driven in California during the Relevant Period.

• P2 time/miles — from the moment you accepted a ride request and started driving toward the rider, until you reached the pickup point and were waiting for them.
• P3 time/miles — from the start of the trip with the rider in your car until the trip ended.

P1 is not counted. Time and miles spent with the app on, waiting for a request, do not count toward your payment. Neither does the drive to a hot zone, the drive home, or any deadhead mileage outside P2.

Double credit for 2020 wage claimants

Berman Claimants get two things nobody else does:

1. A $5,450,000 set-aside (2% of the gross fund), split among them in amounts the Labor Commissioner determines. This is money the Labor Commissioner’s Office chose to give up — it was the agency’s own share of the penalties.
2. A 2x mileage multiplier — their P2 and P3 miles are counted twice when the rest of the fund is divided.

That is a direct, documented reward for the drivers who filed individual wage claims in 2020.

Why “it depends”

Three things are still unknown: the minimum-hours threshold, how many drivers clear it, and the total pooled mileage those drivers logged. Be skeptical of anyone — including a lawyer or an app — promising you a specific dollar figure right now.

When will I actually be paid?

Not soon, and no payment date has been set.

Three separate clocks have to run:

1. Court approval. The judge must enter the Stipulated Judgment. The hearing is October 29, 2026. The date he signs is the “Effective Date.”

2. The Initial Hold Period. Money sits in escrow for 60 days after the Effective Date — or longer if anyone appeals, in which case it stays frozen until the appeal is finished. The parties have agreed to jointly defend the settlement against any challenge.

3. Lyft’s installment schedule. Lyft is not paying in a lump sum. It pays over roughly four years.  On that schedule the final payment lands in the fourth quarter of 2030. Lyft may pay early without penalty.

Who decides when drivers get checks?

The People and the Labor Commissioner hold sole discretion over the distribution schedule, and the agreement expressly allows more than one distribution. If they choose multiple rounds, the Berman Claimant set-aside must be included in the first one.

So a first distribution to drivers is plausible sometime in 2027, but the agreement does not promise it, and later distributions could stretch toward 2030. 

What do I need to do right now?

There is no claim form and no deadline to file. This is not a class action — there is no opt-in and no opt-out. Eligibility is determined from Lyft’s own records.

The one thing that matters is that the settlement administrator can find you.

Angeion Group has been selected as settlement administrator. Lyft is handing over, for every Covered Driver: a unique driver ID, last known name, Social Security number where known, last known mailing address, email and cell number, plus weekly P2 and P3 hours and miles.

If you moved, changed your phone number, or stopped using the email tied to your old Lyft account, that data is stale. Angeion is required to do skip tracing on undeliverable notices, but do not rely on it.

What is coming

The administrator must set up:

• A website where drivers can check their own eligibility and update contact information
• An email address monitored daily
• A call center staffed by actual people during business hours, with language access for callers who do not speak English

None of these are live yet. The Attorney General’s Office and the Labor Commissioner have both said details will be released “in the near future.” Watch oag.ca.gov and dir.ca.gov.

Watch out for scams

A settlement this size and this well-publicized attracts fraud. Until the official site is announced:

• Nobody legitimate will ask you to pay a fee to claim your money
• Nobody legitimate needs your bank login or password
• There is no claim form to buy or file
• Be wary of texts or calls asking you to “verify” your identity with your full SSN before the official administrator site exists

Can Lyft retaliate against me?

No. The agreement bars Lyft from retaliating against any Covered Driver who filed legal papers or gave evidence in this case or in a Berman hearing, or who is perceived to have cooperated with the plaintiffs. Lyft keeps the right to enforce its Terms of Service for unrelated reasons.

Will I owe taxes on this?

Probably, and you should plan for it.

The settlement characterizes driver payments as non-wages. The administrator will issue IRS Form 1099s to the extent required by law. Nothing will be withheld — you receive the gross amount and are responsible for any tax owed.

For tax-reporting purposes the agreement identifies the driver fund as restitution or remediation in the form of business expense reimbursements, not back wages. That characterization is the parties’ own; it is not a ruling by the IRS or the Franchise Tax Board, and it does not guarantee how your individual payment will be treated.

If your payment is substantial, talk to a tax preparer before you spend it. Lyft has no responsibility for any tax you owe.

What this settlement does NOT do

This is backward-looking money. It changes nothing about how you drive today.

No reclassification. Drivers are not becoming employees. The plaintiffs did not even seek injunctive relief. The agreement states that nothing in it bears on driver classification under Proposition 22, and nothing in it is an admission that drivers were ever employees.

Nothing after December 15, 2020. Prop 22 took effect the next day. Every hour driven since then is outside this case — no back pay, no penalties, no relief.

No Prop 22 enforcement. The Labor Commissioner has said it lacks authority to enforce Prop 22’s own guarantees — the 120% minimum-wage floor for engaged time, the healthcare stipend. This settlement does not change that.

Uber drivers

The Uber side of this coordinated case is still live. Uber Technologies, Rasier, LLC, Rasier-CA, LLC and Portier, LLC are expressly carved out. Nothing here settles, prejudices or predicts that outcome.