August 14, 2025 - San Francisco, CA. - A former Californian filed a federal lawsuit on Wednesday challenging a state law that blocks out-of-state residents from driving for Uber and Lyft within the state. Ted Maack, who called California home for 56 years, argues the driver’s license requirement creates unconstitutional barriers against nonresidents seeking work opportunities.

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“The state’s residency requirement for rideshare driving denies nonresidents the fundamental right to practice their occupation on equal terms,” said Pacific Legal Foundation attorney Samantha Romero. “Simply put, it’s discriminatory and unconstitutional.”

Maack moved to Wyoming in 2022, but he regularly returns to California to visit his mother and monitor property he still owns in the North Bay. As a self-employed retiree with a Wyoming commercial driver’s license, he relies on the income he generates through rideshare work—but California bars him from picking up passengers, despite allowing him to deliver tractors through UPS and work for other delivery apps.

California’s law creates absurd double standards. If Maack picked up a passenger in Oregon, Nevada, or Arizona and dropped them off in California, he would be forced to leave the state before picking up another. Meanwhile, taxi and limousine drivers face no such restriction, and active-duty military families receive exemptions allowing them to use out-of-state licenses.

Maack’s lawsuit argues California’s law violates the Constitution by discriminating against out-of-state workers, denying Americans the right to work on equal terms across state lines, and treating similar professional drivers unequally without rational justification.

The case is Maack v. Reynolds.
Source: Pacific Legal Foundation