AB5 and California-based writers

Old college threads.
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nadph
Rikku
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Joined: Mon Jun 08, 2009 4:21 pm

AB5 and California-based writers

Post by nadph »

It's my understanding that people in California are still barred from contributing questions and editing for a number of tournaments and providers (most notably NAQT) as a result of the CA Supreme Court's Dynamex decision and the resulting AB5 legislation that reclassified employment categories for a lot of workers.

Last year, the California legislature passed AB2257, which was supposed to loosen some of the stringent restrictions around freelance writers and content creators (including the end of the infamous 35-submission threshold). My impression is that question writing is an activity that falls under the spirit of this fix, but potentially not the letter - I emailed Seth/NAQT about this when 2257 passed, and was told NAQT's lawyer had determined that AB2257 was insufficient to give the all-clear to California-based contributors.

I am curious if anyone with a law/policy background is aware of the specific hangups that prevent quizbowl writing from being categorized as "freelance writing" under 2257, and whether there might be model legislative or agency language that could enable quizbowl to fall under this categorization. Obviously it's a long shot to advocate for something like this in the context of CA government, but I hope to at least bring this issue up the next time I meet with my state legislator and having something to hand to them would be helpful.

I am taking no position on this post on the advisability of AB5 itself - merely trying to understand if there is any way to narrowly fix the problems quiz bowl is having with the California employment law framework.
Nikhil Desai
Bellarmine College Prep '12
Stanford '18 (leave of absence 2016-17)
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