Author: WorkCompAcademy

Survivors of the Eaton and Palisades fires on Thursday urged Gov. Gavin Newsom to call for the resignation of California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara, following a front-page New York Times report revealing that Lara privately struck a deal with insurers allowing them to drop tens of thousands of policyholders ahead of the Los Angeles fires.

The New York Times investigation, based on internal state documents and communications, found that in 2023 Lara struck a secret deal with insurance companies that incentivized them to dump tens of thousands of policyholders in exchange for future rate hikes. The deal was sold to the public as a way to keep people out of the state’s high-cost, low-benefit FAIR Plan, but just the opposite happened. FAIR Plan nearly doubled, and many families lost coverage just months before the Los Angeles fires.

At a press conference in Altadena, survivors point to this and their own experience to say that California now faces two crises: families who can no longer buy or renew insurance, and those who still have coverage but cannot access the benefits they’ve already paid for. Both failures, survivors said, fall under Lara’s leadership – and now sit on the governor’s desk.

Joy Chen, executive director of the Eaton Fire Survivors Network and a former deputy mayor of Los Angeles, said:

“Families can no longer buy or renew coverage, and those who still have it can’t access the benefits they’ve already paid for. Californians can’t afford another year of failed oversight. This crisis now sits on the governor’s desk. Governor Newsom should call for Commissioner Lara to resign and install leadership that enforces the law and restores public trust.”

A Department of Angels report found that 70 percent of insured Eaton and Palisades survivors face systemic underinsurance and delays and denials blocking their recovery. A second Department of Angels report, released in October 2025, found that more than eight in ten Los Angeles fire survivors remain displaced, with most expected to lose their temporary housing coverage within months. With coverage expiring in real time, families are being forced out of rentals now – a slow-motion disaster unfolding as state leaders fail to act. Survivors described widespread, needless suffering among tens of thousands of Los Angeles fire survivors – families still displaced, underinsured, or denied the benefits they’ve paid for.

Branislav Kecman, an Eaton Fire survivor, said his family paid premiums to State Farm for 12 years before being dropped just months before the fire. The cancellation forced them onto the state’s FAIR Plan, which costs more and covers less.

“That was painful enough,” he said. “But what’s truly devastating is learning that our own Insurance Commissioner secretly cut a deal that encouraged insurers to drop families like ours. We thought we could trust the system. We never imagined we’d be betrayed by the very person elected to protect us.”

Jill Spivack, a longtime Pacific Palisades resident and State Farm policyholder whose home burned in the Palisades Fire, said what began as heartbreak has turned into outrage.

“After the fire, I thought we were protected – we’d paid State Farm for 25 years. But the real disaster was the endless maze of delays and denials. I had to put my business on hold just to fight for what we’d already paid for. Governor Newsom, your words gave us hope. Now we need your actions to make that hope real. Californians deserve an Insurance Commissioner who protects families, not the insurers doing the most harm.”

Consumer Watchdog Executive Director Carmen Balber said Lara’s secret deal exposed a crisis of leadership that can only be resolved by the Governor.

Survivors warned that Los Angeles stands on the edge of a second catastrophe – one of permanent displacement. Lara has approved billion-dollar rate hikes for the state’s largest insurer, State Farm, while 82 percent of its policyholders report negative claims experiences.

A Los Angeles Times analysis found that five major California wildfires between 2017 and 2020 destroyed 22,500 homes – and by 2025, only 38 percent had been rebuilt. The Times identified insurance as the single biggest factor determining recovery: when insurance paid promptly, families rebuilt; when it didn’t, most never recovered.

The Eaton Fire Survivors Network, representing more than 8,500 Californians, has documented nearly 500 firsthand accounts of insurer misconduct and delivered a five-step enforcement plan to Commissioner Lara.. Every elected official representing the Eaton and Palisades fire zones – including Senators Sasha Renée Pérez and Ben Allen, Assembly members John Harabedian and Jacqui Irwin, Supervisor Kathryn Barger, Mayor Karen Bass, and Altadena Town Council President Victoria Knapp – has joined survivors’ call for accountability.

In closing, Chen added: “Let our Los Angeles experience be a warning to every Californian. Our entire housing market will collapse if families can’t buy or renew insurance, and if those who have it can’t get the benefits they’ve paid for. California cannot afford another year of Ricardo Lara. We call on Governor Newsom to act now: urge Commissioner Lara to resign, and install new leadership that enforces the law and rebuilds a functioning insurance market.”

In 2017, the Legislature enacted the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Long-Term Care Facility Residents’ Bill of Rights. The legislation comprehensively addresses issues concerning lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) seniors’ access to, and treatment by, “[l]ong-term care facilit[ies] – an umbrella term covering entities that provide services ranging from skilled nursing to residential personal care for the elderly.

In December, just before the 2017 law went into effect, plaintiff Taking Offense (which describes itself as an entity dedicated to opposing efforts “to coerce society to accept [the] transgender fiction that a person can be whatever sex/gender s/he thinks s/he is, or chooses to be”) filed a petition for a writ of mandate in the superior court seeking to block enforcement of the pronouns provision as facially unconstitutional under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The lawsuit worked its way up to the California Supreme Court.

On November 6, 2025, the Supreme Court delivered a significant ruling in Taking Offense v. State of California (S270535), a case challenging a key provision of the 2017 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Long-Term Care Facility Residents’ Bill of Rights. This legislation aimed to fulfill existing anti-discrimination laws by explicitly prohibiting various forms of bias based on sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or HIV status. The Legislature cited studies highlighting pervasive mistreatment of LGBT elders, including denial of admission, abrupt discharges, harassment, restrictions on visitation, and refusal to use preferred names or pronouns, often stemming from lifelong marginalization that left many without family support networks.

At the heart of the dispute was Health and Safety Code § 1439.51, subdivision (a)(5) – the “pronouns provision” – which makes it unlawful for facility staff to “[w]illfully and repeatedly fail to use a resident’s preferred name or pronouns after being clearly informed,” when motivated wholly or partially by the resident’s protected characteristics. Enforcement draws from pre-existing administrative, civil, and, in extreme cases, criminal penalties applicable to other violations in long-term care settings. Taking Offense, an unincorporated association of California taxpayers opposed to what it termed the “transgender fiction,” filed a pre-enforcement petition for writ of mandate in Sacramento County Superior Court in December 2017, seeking to block the provision as a facial violation of the First Amendment’s free speech protections.

The trial court denied the petition, upholding the provision against First Amendment challenges. On appeal, the Third District Court of Appeal partially reversed in 2021, deeming the pronouns provision overinclusive and insufficiently tailored to the state’s anti-discrimination interest, thus facially unconstitutional under heightened First Amendment scrutiny – whether viewed as content-based speech regulation or compelled speech. The appellate court emphasized that the law criminalized a viewpoint on gender identity without adequately advancing its goals.

The Supreme Court granted review. In a unanimous opinion the court first addressed standing, raised by the state for the first time on review. The justices agreed that the 2018 amendment to Code of Civil Procedure § 526a, which governs taxpayer standing, now limits such suits to local governments and excludes wholly state entities or officers. Tracing the evolution from common law taxpayer standing to the statute’s history, the court clarified that prior decisions blending the two doctrines no longer apply post-amendment. However, under the case’s unusual circumstances – including the state’s delayed objection, the parties’ full litigation of the merits, and the court’s own past expansive interpretations – the justices exercised discretion to reach the merits, avoiding an advisory opinion while deferring broader questions about common law or public interest standing.

On the substance, the court reversed the Court of Appeal, upholding the pronouns provision. Emphasizing the narrow context – vulnerable residents in a “captive audience” environment akin to their home, where staff provide intimate medical and personal care – the justices characterized the law as a regulation of discriminatory conduct that only incidentally burdens speech. Drawing on U.S. Supreme Court precedents like R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul (1992) and this court’s plurality in Aguilar v. Avis Rent A Car System, Inc. (1999), the opinion reasoned that anti-discrimination measures targeting hostile environments, such as workplace harassment, do not trigger First Amendment scrutiny merely because they involve words. The provision is carefully limited: it requires willful, repeated, knowing acts motivated by bias, exempts professionally reasonable clinical judgments, and does not bar staff from expressing gender views in other ways or contexts. Distinguishing cases like Reed v. Town of Gilbert (2015) and 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis (2023), which involved content-based restrictions in public forums or compelled expressive services, the court found no abridgment of free speech rights.

Even assuming intermediate scrutiny applied (as a content-neutral regulation), the provision was appropriate as it advances compelling state interests in protecting LGBT seniors’ dignity, access to care, and freedom from discrimination in a setting where avoidance is impractical, and it is narrowly tailored without restricting more speech than necessary. The court also rejected claims that potential criminal penalties – available only for egregious, unremedied violations after administrative processes – render the law facially invalid, noting their rarity and the Legislature’s intent to use them as a last resort.

On November 3, 2025, two nearly identical class action lawsuits were filed in the San Francisco Superior Court, targeting the ridesharing giants Uber and Lyft for alleged sex-based discrimination against male drivers through preferential matching programs designed to prioritize female and nonbinary drivers for certain passengers.

In the case of Almond and Ruud v. Uber Technologies, Inc., plaintiffs Andre Almond and Hans Ruud – both allegedly highly rated, long-term male independent contractors who have driven for Uber in California for over seven and ten years, respectively – accuse Uber of unlawfully implementing its “Women Preferences” program on August 13, 2025, in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

This initiative, which Uber had piloted globally since 2019 in over 40 countries and completed more than 100 million sex-segregated rides, allows female riders to request female drivers via in-app settings, effectively reserving access to roughly half the passenger pool (female riders) for the 20% of drivers who are women.

Male drivers like the plaintiffs, who represent about 80% of Uber’s workforce and allegedly have spotless safety records with female passengers, are systematically excluded from these matches, resulting in lost income, fewer ride opportunities, reputational harm from implied unsafety stereotypes, and strained rider relationships.

Despite alleged internal memos from 2022 highlighting “significant legal risk” under U.S. anti-discrimination laws – and delays in domestic rollout due to counsel’s warnings – Uber proceeded, promoting the feature for “safety and confidence.”

The suit claims this violates California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act, which broadly prohibits arbitrary sex discrimination in business establishments and entitles victims to at least $4,000 in statutory damages per violation. It is seeking class certification for over 80,000 affected male California drivers, the plaintiffs demand declaratory and injunctive relief to halt the program, plus actual, punitive, and compensatory damages, restitution, attorneys’ fees, and a jury trial.

Also on November 3, the same lawfirm filed Kennedy v. Lyft, Inc.- which brings forth plaintiffs William Kennedy and Louie Alatorre – fellow veteran male Lyft drivers from Los Angeles County allegedly with over eight years of service, thousands of five-star rides, and no incidents involving female passengers. They charge Lyft with perpetuating similar bias via its “Women+ Connect” program, launched nationwide on September 11, 2023, and expanded to over 240 markets by 2025.

According to the information on the Lyft website “Women+ Connect puts women and nonbinary people in the driver’s seat – literally – by letting them choose to match with more women and nonbinary riders. The feature offers the option to turn on a preference in the Lyft app to prioritize matches with other nearby women and nonbinary riders. If no women or nonbinary riders are nearby, drivers with the preference on will still be matched with men as Women+ Connect is a preference feature, not a guarantee.”

These plaintiffs allege Lyft “has facilitated “millions” of such sex-based assignments, openly advertising the tool for enhanced “comfort” and “peace of mind” despite knowing it disadvantages the 77% male driver majority.”

The Lyft case is proposing a class of hundreds of thousands of impacted male California drivers (potentially over 80,000), they seek the same sweeping remedies: program termination through injunctions, statutory damages starting at $4,000 per violation, disgorgement of profits, punitive awards, interest, costs, and a jury trial.