Seattle’s first-in-the-nation ordinance allowing drivers-for-hire to collectively bargain is in jeopardy after an appeals court ruled it isn’t exempted from federal antitrust law.
The ruling is a boost to ride-hailing companies such as Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc. and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which have attacked the ordinance.
Seattle “has a hard road ahead” if it wants to preserve the ordinance, said Charlotte Garden, a law professor at Seattle University who had urged the San Francisco-based appeals court to uphold the measure’s legality.
The three-judge panel concluded Washington state didn’t authorize the law specifically enough, and didn’t play ...