After burning out in corporate call center and health insurance jobs, Gregory Hardin wanted a change.
Hardin, 42, had grown tired of sitting behind a computer all day, so he started driving for Lyft in early 2020, shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic upended daily life. He began driving for Uber about four years later, allowing him to earn money delivering meals for Uber Eats in addition to shuttling passengers from place to place.
Though he said he received high ratings in his roughly two years as an Uber driver, his tenure there abruptly came to an end about five months ago, after he logged into his account from his new iPhone 16. The company flagged his account for being logged into another device and deactivated it two weeks after he bought the new phone, he said.
“I was thinking, like, ‘Wow, so I do something nice for myself, and it ends up costing me my livelihood,’” Hardin said. “I’m just caught off guard. I have to scramble for my new reality.”
As Hardin grapples with his own deactivation, organizers in Illinois and across the country have been pushing for broader protections for rideshare workers facing similar predicaments. In early August, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed a new law that paves the way for establishing an appeals process for drivers facing deactivation and modifying the existing process overseen by the big rideshare companies. Like laws passed in Massachusetts and California, the recently passed Illinois law allows drivers to unionize.
Rideshare giants Uber and Lyft each offer recourse for drivers facing deactivation, but drivers and their advocates across the country said that their appeals processes favor companies over drivers.
As it stands, few Chicago drivers return to the platform after being deactivated, according to data obtained from the city of Chicago by Capital & Main. Between Jan. 1, 2019, and July 20, 2026, about 3.5% of the more than 30,000 rideshare drivers deactivated from rideshare platforms had been reinstated. The data does not specify which drivers were deactivated from which platforms.
Uber’s and Lyft’s appeals processes require drivers to communicate with the companies through an app, drivers said. That can be particularly challenging for drivers who speak English as a second language, said Nathaniel Hudson-Hartman, a rideshare driver and organizer with Drivers Union Oregon, who regularly hears from drivers who’ve been deactivated. The new Illinois law will allow drivers to have union representation when contesting their termination from the platform.
Representatives from Lyft and Uber said their appeals processes are fair to drivers and that drivers appealing their deactivation have an opportunity to interact with people.
CJ Macklin, a Lyft spokesperson, said in an emailed statement that “From day one, we’ve built our policies to help protect drivers, riders, and the broader community.” As part of the investigatory process, the company will call the driver and email them if they can’t reach them by phone, the statement said. Through the email, the driver can request a call or submit any documentation they have to support their claim.
Austen Radcliff, an Uber spokesperson, said in an emailed statement that each of the company’s appeals uses people to review each deactivation appeal and does not solely rely on automated systems.
Legislators in Maryland, Washington, Virginia and Ohio have also either proposed or passed laws that would create a more transparent process for contesting deactivations. The laws in those states do not offer drivers a path toward unionization.
Tia Koonse, policy director at the Labor Center of the University of California, Los Angeles, said the new laws establishing an appeals process for drivers facing deactivation are critical at a time when some drivers are organizing for union representation and therefore might face retaliation.
Making an example of one driver might be enough to chill organizing, she said. “You do it to one driver, and then everybody else knows what could happen, and they don’t organize anymore,” she said.
In response to his sudden deactivation, Hardin wrote a multiparagraph appeal to the company to explain why he was kicked off the platform. He repeatedly emailed the company, but it did not budge, he said.
“Anyone driving rideshare of any kind deserves a full-on investigation if they’re talking about losing a job … because it does adversely affect people’s lives,” Hardin said.
In fall 2022, a coalition of community groups and unions in Illinois formed the App Drivers Union. They included the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, the Independent Drivers Guild, Service Employees International Union and the Chicago Gig Alliance, part of the Chicago-area social justice nonprofit The People’s Lobby, said Ronnie Gonzalez, Machinists union international representative and head of the App Drivers Union. (SEIU is a financial supporter of Capital & Main.)
Lori Simmons, a lead organizer at The People’s Lobby’s Education Institute, said the prevalence of unchecked deactivations contributes to the low pay and poor working conditions of Chicago’s drivers.
“They don’t have to retain the workforce that they have here because they can just keep deactivating drivers and finding new ones to sign up,” she said. Spokespeople for both Uber and Lyft disputed Simmons’ claim, saying drivers were deactivated for policy violations, and their pay isn’t determined by their tenure on the platform.
Between Jan. 1, 2019, and July 20, 2026, 30,881 rideshare drivers were deactivated from rideshare platforms, according to data from the Chicago Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection that Capital & Main obtained through a public records request. During that period, only 1,085 were ever reinstated, the data showed.
Among the reasons why Chicago drivers were deactivated from the apps were unauthorized account sharing (30.41%), fraudulent documents used during the onboarding process (26.75%) and “conduct that gave rise to a public safety concern” (21.72%), the data showed.
As Illinois begins implementing its rideshare unionization law, other states, like Washington, which already have deactivation protections, are working to get drivers reinstated.
In Washington, the Drivers Union, a drivers’ association affiliated with Teamsters union Local 117, has helped more than 2,000 drivers get reinstated on rideshare apps over the past five years, said Anna Minard, a spokesperson for the Drivers Union. The law that established statewide deactivation protections went into effect a few years ago. But the process for contesting deactivation can take time.
Robert Whitlock is one of the drivers who — with the help of the Drivers Union — was able to successfully appeal his deactivation because of the state law.
One spring morning in 2022, Whitlock woke up in his home in the Olympia metro area, opened his Uber app and discovered that his account was suddenly suspended.
Whitlock couldn’t recall whether the company told him why Uber deactivated him, but he ultimately found out during an arbitration hearing with the company. The rideshare giant alleged that it had received a report from a passenger that the driver who arrived didn’t match the image they saw in the app, meaning that another driver had been driving under his account.
“I was like, ‘That’s totally bogus,’” Whitlock said. “I’m sure it happens, but I didn’t do that.”
Ultimately, it took Whitlock four years to appeal his Uber deactivation. He also won back pay for lost wages, he said. It took him two years to successfully appeal a Lyft deactivation that he said stemmed from an accusation from a customer that he had used a racial slur, which he denies.
Hardin is still waiting for his appeal to be resolved. Following the deactivation from Uber, Hardin estimated that his income has been slashed by 60%. In the meantime, Hardin switched to Grubhub deliveries, but the income from the meal delivery service is “wildly inconsistent,” he said.
The unexpected Uber deactivation sent Hardin scrambling for a new source of income, he said.In addition to supporting himself, he lives with a girlfriend and her daughter, and he supports his father, who lives in a Florida nursing home. When Hardin spoke with Capital & Main in early August, he planned to go to Wisconsin the following day to obtain his commercial learner’s permit.
Reflecting on his ordeal, Hardin said, “Had that not happened, I would have never made that call to the trucking company to even make the first step.” Rideshare companies should incorporate a judge or arbitrator to intervene in wrongful deactivations, he said. Without that, drivers’ lives could be upended.
“If they did just a thorough investigation for myself, they would see that there was no foul play, and they could go ahead and … reactivate me,” Hardin said. “It may not be a big thing to Uber, but it’s a huge thing to a driver.”
