Two Uber Sexual Assault Bellwether Trials To Be Held in North Carolina

Venue for the first federal trials has been set, while a state trial is underway in California, where jurors learned that Uber rejected a proposed gender-based driver option.

The U.S. District Judge presiding over all Uber sexual assault lawsuits brought throughout the federal court system has announced that two claims will be transferred to the Western District of North Carolina, as part of a series of early “bellwether” trials.

To date, more than 3,000 Uber sexual assault lawsuits have been filed by passengers who say they were harassed, assaulted, kidnapped or raped by drivers, with plaintiffs alleging the rideshare company consistently placed profits ahead of passenger safety.

The complaints, largely filed by women, accuse Uber of relying on only minimal background checks, failing to equip vehicles with surveillance cameras, and neglecting to provide sexual assault or harassment awareness training for drivers.

While most of the federal claims have been centralized in a multidistrict litigation (MDL) in the Northern District of California, where U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer is overseeing coordinated discovery and preparing a group of representative cases for early bellwether trials, hundreds of similar claims have also been filed in California state court.

In May, Judge Breyer identified six Uber sexual assault lawsuits, which will be part of a first “wave” of bellwether claims to go before juries in the federal court system. The very first bellwether trial, involving claims by Jaylynn Dean, is scheduled to begin in the Northern District of California on January 7, 2026.

In a pretrial order (PDF) on September 16, Judge Breyer indicated that two additional wave 1 claims, identified as WHB 318 and WHB 832 to keep the plaintiffs’ anonymity, will be transferred to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina for additional jury trials, which Judge Breyer still intends to preside over.

“Both cases shall remain bellwethers in Trial Wave 1 and will continue to be adjudicated by this Court. By transferring these cases now, an action number in the Western District of North Carolina can be generated and assigned to the Court, which will allow the Court to preside over the trials in that district.”

– Judge Charles R. Breyer, Pretrial Order No. 22

A sequence for the remainder of the federal trials has yet to be released.

These bellwether trials are designed to see how a live jury will respond to evidence and testimony that could be repeated in thousands of individual trials. Although the outcomes of these bellwether trials will not have any binding effect on the other Uber sexual assault lawsuits, the average jury payouts awarded could have a substantial influence on Uber sexual assault settlement negotiations.

California Uber Sexual Assault Lawsuit Trial Underway

In addition to the federal cases, there are also about 600 Uber sexual assault lawsuits in California state court, where the first jury trial got underway on September 8 in San Francisco Superior Court.

The trial, which is expected to last through the rest of the month, involves claims brought by a woman identified only as Jessica C., who says she was sexually assaulted by an Uber driver while traveling home for the holidays from college in December 2019. The incident traumatized her, leading to a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), according to the complaint.

Uber sexual assault attorneys have argued that the rideshare service chronically underreported thousands of passenger sexual assaults. Last year, the company received 85,000 such reports, according to the opening arguments.

The plaintiff’s attorneys have also told the jury that Uber postponed a program that would have let women pick the gender of their drivers. However, Uber executives claimed they could face discrimination lawsuits. Last year, Uber launched a pilot program to do just that in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Detroit. Lyft, which has also faced several passenger sexual assault lawsuits, enacted a similar feature in 2023.

While the outcomes of these bellwether trials are not binding on other claims, they could help the parties reach a global agreement to settle thousands of Uber driver sexual assault lawsuits, preventing the need for the cases to be remanded back to their originating districts for individual trial dates.