Uber's $77 Million California Power Grab: How Initiative 25-0022 Could Leave You Without a Lawyer — or a Doctor — After a Car Crash

If you've been approached by a signature gatherer in a Southern California parking lot or shopping center over the past few months, there's a good chance they handed you a clipboard with a friendly-sounding title at the top: the "Protecting Automobile Accident Victims from Attorney Self-Dealing Act."

That title is the most polished piece of marketing in the entire document.

The measure — formally known as California Initiative 25-0022 — is a proposed amendment to the California Constitution funded almost entirely by a single corporation: Uber Technologies, Inc. As of mid-2026, Uber has put more than $77 million into the campaign to get it on the November 2026 ballot. By any measure, it is one of the most expensive ballot efforts in California history.

And despite the consumer-friendly name, it has almost nothing to do with protecting accident victims. Read closely, it does the opposite: it would make it dramatically harder for an injured Californian to find a lawyer, get medical treatment, and recover the actual cost of being hurt in any car crash — not just a crash involving an Uber.

A new investigative report released in May 2026 by Consumer Watchdog, titled Uber's License to Kill Insurance Scam, explains why Uber is spending this kind of money — and the answer has very little to do with helping you, and a lot to do with a $12 billion insurance reserve, a Hawaii captive insurer, and the rollout of 20,000 robotaxis on California streets.

Here is what every California driver, passenger, and pedestrian needs to understand before they sign anything — or before they vote.

What Initiative 25-0022 Actually Does

The initiative is structured as a constitutional amendment, not an ordinary statute. That distinction matters: if it passes, the California Legislature cannot fix it. Repealing or modifying it requires another statewide vote. That is a one-way door, and Uber's lawyers know it.

If approved by voters in November 2026, the measure would do four things to every motor vehicle accident case in California:

1. Cap attorney fees, costs, and medical bills at 25% of the total recovery, enforced with criminal penalties.

Today, most California personal injury attorneys work on a contingency basis at roughly 33% to 40%, meaning they get paid only if they recover money for the client. The initiative requires that an auto accident victim retain at least 75% of the total amount recovered — which means attorney fees, litigation costs, and unpaid medical bills (in the form of liens) all have to fit within the remaining 25%. An attorney who structures a contract that violates this requirement faces misdemeanor liability and State Bar discipline.

That sounds like it benefits the client. In practice, it doesn't. Serious personal injury cases — wrongful death, traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury, multi-vehicle catastrophic cases — require attorneys to advance tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in litigation costs: expert witnesses, accident reconstruction, life-care planners, deposition costs, court fees. Those costs come out of the attorney's pocket and are repaid only if there is a recovery. The same 25% pot also has to absorb whatever medical bills the client incurred on a lien basis. Once you account for costs and liens, the actual attorney fee on a serious case can collapse to a fraction of what a contingency lawyer would need to take the case. The likely outcome is exactly what Uber wants: fewer lawsuits filed, smaller settlements, and the most seriously injured victims unable to find counsel at all.

2. Separately, tie the medical expenses that can be awarded to Medicare and Medi-Cal reimbursement rates.

Under current California law, accident victims can recover the reasonable value of the medical care they actually received. The initiative would replace that standard with one tied to Medicare, Medi-Cal, and a "national health insurance database" — government reimbursement rates that are routinely below what private providers actually charge. This medical award cap operates separately from, and in addition to, the 25% retention rule above. Together, they squeeze accident victims at two different points in the recovery.

The result is a quiet, compounding squeeze. Treating physicians, surgeons, physical therapists, and imaging providers who currently treat accident victims on a lien — meaning they get paid out of any future settlement — will increasingly stop doing so, because the capped reimbursement won't cover the actual cost of care. Injured Californians without health insurance or with high deductibles will have nowhere to turn for treatment. And because general damages (pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life) are typically calculated as a function of medical specials, capping the medicals compresses the entire case value.

3. Prohibit referral relationships between personal injury attorneys and medical providers.

This provision is sold as "anti-corruption," but its real effect is to break the medical-legal infrastructure that allows uninsured and under-insured Californians to get treatment after a crash they did not cause. If an attorney can't refer a client to a provider willing to treat on a lien, the client doesn't get treated.

4. Apply to every motor vehicle case in California — not just rideshare.

This is the giveaway. If Initiative 25-0022 were really about Uber-specific abuses, it would apply only to rideshare cases. It does not. It would govern every car crash in the state — drunk driving cases, hit-and-run cases, commercial trucking cases, defective vehicle cases, and yes, eventually, robotaxi cases.

Which brings us to the part Uber would prefer you didn't notice.

Why Uber Is Really Doing This: The $12 Billion Piggy Bank

The Consumer Watchdog report released in May 2026 pulls back the curtain on Uber's financial structure and the strategic reason behind the company's enormous political spending. The findings are striking.

Uber is, functionally, its own insurance company. About 95% of Uber's automobile insurance risk is held internally through a wholly-owned captive insurance subsidiary called Aleka Insurance, Inc., incorporated in Hawaii. Aleka's entire board of directors is made up of current or recent Uber executives. Every fare you pay includes an insurance premium — and the vast majority of those premiums don't go to a real third-party insurer. They go to Uber paying Uber.

Through this structure, Uber has accumulated $12.46 billion in insurance reserves as of 2025, up from $6.7 billion in 2023 — an 81% increase, while trips grew only 44% over the same period. Consumer Watchdog's analysis, using standard California auto insurance industry benchmarks (reserves equal to 100–120% of earned premium), concludes that Uber's appropriate reserve level should be closer to $4.5 to $5.4 billion — meaning Uber may be over-reserving by $7 billion or more.

Why does this matter to California crash victims? Because reserves held against future claims are not taxed as profit. They sit in a protected pool, growing year after year. And under the federal tax code, if Uber can later reduce its expected liability — say, by passing a constitutional amendment that limits what victims can recover — those reserves can be reclassified and redeployed as deductible business investment.

Where would that money go? Uber has already told its investors. The company has committed roughly $10 billion to a robotaxi expansion, including a deal to purchase up to 20,000 autonomous Lucid vehicles equipped with Nuro driving systems beginning in 2026. Initiative 25-0022 is, in effect, the legal infrastructure required to make that financial transition profitable: limit what victims can recover, free the reserves, and finance the robotaxis.

The report's title says it plainly: License to Kill.

SB 371 Was the Warm-Up. Initiative 25-0022 Is the Main Event.

In 2025, Uber successfully lobbied the California Legislature to pass Senate Bill 371, which slashed the uninsured/underinsured motorist (UM/UIM) coverage that rideshare companies must carry from $1 million down to $60,000 per person and $300,000 per accident.

The justification offered to legislators by Uber's head of public policy was that 45% of every fare in Los Angeles County goes to government-mandated insurance — implying that ordinary Uber riders were footing the bill for expensive third-party insurance.

What the Legislature was not told, according to the Consumer Watchdog report, is that Uber was paying that money to itself. The "insurance" expense Uber complained about was largely a transfer between Uber and its own Hawaii captive — at a premium rate Uber set, into reserves that have nearly doubled in two years.

Days after Governor Newsom signed SB 371, Uber filed Initiative 25-0022 with the Attorney General's office. A few weeks later, Uber announced its 20,000-vehicle robotaxi deal.

The sequence is not a coincidence. SB 371 reduced the floor of available coverage. Initiative 25-0022 is designed to reduce the ceiling of what victims can recover. The robotaxis arrive after both are in place.

What This Means If You Are Hurt in a California Car Accident

I represent injured Californians in motor vehicle cases. Let me describe, in concrete terms, what would change for the average crash victim if Initiative 25-0022 passes:

• You will have a harder time finding a lawyer. Serious-injury contingency cases will become economically unviable for most plaintiff firms, particularly solo and small firms that don't have the war chests to absorb the cost compression. The largest, most well-resourced corporate defense firms will not face the same constraint. The playing field tilts.

• You will have a harder time finding a doctor. When physicians cannot be paid the reasonable value of their work — only a capped government rate — they will stop accepting accident cases. Lien-based treatment, which is often the only path for uninsured patients, will dry up.

• Your case will be worth less, even if liability is clear. Tying medicals to Medicare rates compresses both the special damages and the general damages calculation. The same injury that recovers $400,000 today might recover $150,000 under the new rules.

• Defective vehicle and robotaxi claims become almost impossible to bring. Product defect claims arising from vehicle crashes — defective brakes, defective airbags, defective autonomous driving software — fall under the same 25% retention rule and medical award caps. This is the provision that matters most as 20,000 robotaxis prepare to enter California streets.

• The harm is not limited to Uber riders. Every Californian injured in any motor vehicle accident — by a drunk driver, a distracted driver, a delivery van, an autonomous vehicle, anyone — would be subject to the same constraints.

What You Can Do

The signature gathering deadline for Initiative 25-0022 is June 8, 2026. The measure needs more than 874,000 valid voter signatures to qualify for the November 2026 ballot. If you are approached:

1. Read the actual text. Not the summary on the clipboard. Not the headline. The text.

1. Ask who is funding the campaign. The committee is called "A More Affordable California." Its sole funder is Uber.

1. You are under no obligation to sign anything. Walking away is a complete and legal response.

If 25-0022 qualifies, voters will see it on the November 3, 2026 ballot — along with several competing measures backed by consumer groups, the Consumer Attorneys of California, and the California Medical Association that would protect the right to counsel of choice and impose stricter safety and liability rules on rideshare companies.

If you have already been injured in a motor vehicle accident in California, your existing rights are intact. Initiative 25-0022 is not law, and it will not become law unless voters approve it in November.

But the time to understand what is being proposed — and what is at stake — is now, before the signature deadline, before the ad campaign, and before 20,000 robotaxis hit the road.

A Final Word

Consumer protection laws are written to protect consumers. When a corporation spends $77 million to put a "consumer protection" measure on the ballot, the question every Californian should ask is simple: who is actually being protected, and from what?

In the case of Initiative 25-0022, the answer is that Uber is being protected from the people it injures — and the lawyers and doctors who help them.

If you or a loved one has been injured in a California auto accident, you have rights today that this initiative would take away tomorrow. If you have questions about how a current or future case might be affected, our firm is available to discuss your situation.

Adam Kocaj is the founder of Kocaj Law, P.C., a personal injury firm based in San Juan Capistrano, California. He represents injured Californians in motor vehicle, rideshare, and catastrophic injury cases. He is licensed to practice in California and Michigan.

This blog post is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Reading this article does not create an attorney-client relationship.