Paula wanted to travel with her guide dog, but Uber drivers kept cancelling
Paula Hobley launched proceedings in the Federal Court against Uber this year, alleging that between March 2021 and November 2022, she had 32 trips cancelled after drivers matched to her booking saw a note that she was travelling with her assistance dog, Vonda, and refused to pick her up.
The Victorian woman claims the behaviour amounts to a breach of anti-discrimination laws because of her disability. She took legal action after initially making a complaint against Uber at the Human Rights Commission, where the matter could not be resolved through conciliation.
Uber insists it has not breached anti-discrimination laws. Central to Uber's argument is its claim playing down responsibility for its drivers because they are contractors, not employees. The group has argued this across a range of legal questions such as employee wage deals, working conditions and instances of driver misbehaviour.
In its defence submitted to the Federal Court, Uber maintains it is not a company that provides transport services, but rather, a technology company that provides users with access to its smartphone application, which matches them with and facilitates payments to drivers, who are independent contractors.
Uber argues that any alleged refusal of service is a question for the independent drivers, not Uber, which cannot control which jobs independent drivers on its platform accept. Uber argues it never refused Hobley its services, in that her access to the Uber app was never cut off.
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'Drivers are the ones who choose whether to accept, ignore or decline trip requests... [Uber] does not have control over a driver cancelling an accepted trip request,' Uber said in its defence. It said it 'denies the allegation' that it ever assigned a driver to Hobley's trip request or to any customer.
Uber also said while it denied it had engaged in any discrimination, any such discrimination would not be unlawful because avoiding it 'would impose an unjustifiable hardship' on the company. Uber does not detail what the hardship would be.
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