Hip Hip Hooray! Cheerleaders are Employees!
There is no better argument for a part-time Legislature in California than AB 202 – a bill signed yesterday by the Governor. AB 202 can only be explained as the result of two problems with the Legislature: Politicians who imagine problems that do not exist in order to justify their position and politicians driven by the simpleton view that passing a law will solve a problem. And, the Governor is no better. If he was, he would not have signed this ridiculous piece of legislation.
AB 202 requires professional sports teams in California to classify cheerleaders working for the team as employees. The official analysis of the bill contains a laughable attempt at justification which includes the following statements:
According to the author, the widespread practice of worker misclassification has resulted in a failure to justly compensate cheerleaders. This bill will ensure that professional cheerleaders will no longer be misrepresented as independent contractors by statutorily defining them as “employees” entitled to the same legal rights and benefits as employees.
As mentioned above, a lawsuit was filed in January of last year alleging a number of employment law violations against the Oakland Raiders. Similar lawsuits have reportedly been filed against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the New York Jets, the Buffalo Bills, the Cincinnati Bengals, and the National football League itself.
Even if the practice of classifying cheerleaders is widespread, we are talking about a tiny, tiny fraction of the workers in California. More importantly, the attempted justification mentions the solution to the alleged problem without even recognizing that it already exists. Cheerleaders who are misclassified do not need AB 202 and a new law on the books. Any employer who misclassifies an employee as an independent contractor is subject to extensive liability. The worker can easily find a plaintiff-side lawyer eager to sue on their behalf. Professional sports teams are particularly attractive defendants because of money and publicity. Even if a particular cheerleader could not find an eager lawyer to take the case on contingency, the cheerleader could always go to the California Labor Commissioner who has the power and an eager willingness to remedy any misclassification issue.
In short, we did not need AB 202. We already had more than adequate laws and tools for rectifying misclassification of workers. We should be outraged that the politicians in Sacramento waste time and resources, and pass unnecessary laws that make our legal system more complicated, costly and inefficient.