A federal judge in San Francisco granted preliminary approval on March 13, 2026, to a $24.75 million class action settlement between Grubhub Holdings Inc. and approximately 60,000 California delivery drivers, clearing the path toward a final approval hearing set for July 30, 2026 [1]. The claim filing deadline for class members was June 18, 2026 [2]. Grubhub denied all wrongdoing.
The case, Lawson et al. v. Grubhub Holdings, spans more than a decade and centers on allegations that Grubhub misclassified its California delivery drivers as independent contractors rather than employees, denying them minimum wage protections, overtime compensation, and expense reimbursements required under California labor law [1][2]. Named plaintiff Raef Lawson originally filed suit in the Northern District of California, and the litigation proceeded through years of contested discovery and prior rulings before reaching settlement terms [1]. U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley presided over the preliminary approval proceedings [1].
California's employee classification framework, including the ABC test codified under Assembly Bill 5, places the burden on hiring entities to demonstrate that workers operate independently of the company's core business before contractor status applies. The Grubhub litigation predates AB5's 2020 effective date, but the underlying wage-and-hour claims track the same statutory protections the law later reinforced. The gig economy classification question has generated parallel litigation across California against multiple platform-based delivery and ride-share companies, making the Lawson settlement a closely watched data point for ongoing disputes.
At the preliminary approval stage, the court determined the settlement was within the range of reasonableness for purposes of notifying the class and scheduling a final fairness hearing. Final approval requires the court to find the settlement fair, adequate, and reasonable under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(e), a standard that invites objections from class members and scrutiny of the fee arrangement for class counsel [2]. No objection figures were available in the preliminary record.
If final approval issues on July 30, the settlement will resolve the last major procedural stage of one of the earliest gig-economy misclassification cases to reach this posture in federal court. The outcome will carry persuasive weight in pending California worker classification disputes and may inform how other platform companies assess litigation exposure under analogous state wage statutes.