Uber has 30 days to require certain drivers to get fingerprinted if the ride-hail giant intends to continue transporting unaccompanied teens in California.
The California Public Utilities Commission issued a ruling Thursday that requires taxi and ride-hail drivers who are carrying unaccompanied minors in the state to pass a fingerprint background check. The ruling also requires transport companies to pay for the cost of those background checks.
Uber has a history of fighting back against fingerprint-based background check requirements for drivers. Seven years ago, Uber and Lyft blocked a similar effort in California to fingerprint drivers. The company has argued that its current name-based background checks and other guardrails are sufficient, and that such an inconvenient step would discourage drivers from signing up to the platform and would disproportionately affect minorities.
All that goes out the window when it comes to transporting kids safely and ensuring they’re not getting into the car with a potential sex offender.
“When an adult is being tasked to provide a service to a minor, the adult is placed in a position of trust, responsibility, and control over California’s most vulnerable citizenry – children,” reads the decision. “Not conducting a fingerprint-based background check to identify adults with disqualifying arrests or criminal records would place the unaccompanied minor in a potentially dangerous, if not life-threatening situation.”
Uber launched Uber for Teens, its service that allows teens aged 13 to 17 to hail an Uber without a parent or guardian, in February 2024. The CPUC sent a warning letter to Uber strongly recommending that Uber stop the service until a 2016 rulemaking around background checks could be resolved. In March, Uber asked for clarity on the rule, specifically the part that stated any business involved “primarily” in transporting minors would need to enforce strict background checks. The company said this summer that fewer than 10% of the company’s total rides involve unaccompanied minors.
At the core of the debate has been whether Uber should be required to participate in the Department of Justice’s Trustline program. Trustline is a registry maintained by the California Department of Social Services that uses fingerprinting to screen caregivers for criminal arrests and convictions. It also screens applicants against the Child Abuse Central Index, which contains reports of suspected child abuse and neglect.
Uber has said its own name-based screening system via Checkr, as well as safety features like live trip tracking included in Uber for Teens, is adequate to keep riders of any age safe. Uber also says it only pairs the most experienced and highly rated drivers with teens.
Uber has also been accused of not taking enough steps to protect riders from dangerous situations, including child trafficking. In July, two families in South Carolina sued Uber alleging the company allowed their teen daughters to be taken across state lines to a predator’s home where one of the girls was sexually assaulted.
The CPUC’s ruling is bad news for Uber, which launched Uber for Teens in California in February 2024, but good news for HopSkipDrive, a startup that provides a ride-sharing service for kids and advocated in favor of this ruling.
HopSkipDrive refers to its drivers as “CareDrivers,” and says they all have caregiving experience and go through a 15-point certification before being onboarded — including a fingerprint-based background check. The startup also uses telematics to detect unsafe driving behavior and enable real-time ride tracking, and has a dedicated team monitoring each ride.
The CPUC’s ruling also requires transport companies that intend to transport minors share information with the agency on how they implement live trip tracking for parents, what safety procedures they implement at pickup and drop-off locations, and what sort of driver training the companies implement specifically around transporting unaccompanied minors.
The ruling also says that each company is responsible for paying for the checks.
Uber has also argued against this stipulation, saying that forcing the company – which has a market cap of around $150 billion as of December – to pay for fingerprinting would result in a price hike for the Uber for Teens service. Uber, like many large companies, has a history of offloading costs associated with rulings and legislation onto the customer. For example, California riders can expect to see the following message at the bottom of their Uber receipts: “In California, on average, roughly 33% of the customer price went towards covering government-mandated commercial insurance for rideshare in July 2024, one of the highest rates in the country.”
HopSkipDrive pays for the cost of fingerprint checks for its drivers. The Commission wrote in its ruling that “if small [transportation network companies] like HopSkipDrive can cover the cost of a TrustLine background check, Uber should do so as well.”
Uber did not respond in time to TechCrunch’s request for comment.
