Uber Passenger Sexual Assault Trial Underway in California State Court

The case will involve similar evidence and allegations to what has been raised in thousands of Uber passenger sexual assault lawsuits pending in the federal court system, where the first trial is scheduled to begin on January 7, 2026.

The first trial in the nation over claims that Uber failed to protect passengers from sexual predators working as drivers for the rideshare service began before a California state court jury on Monday.

Uber currently faces more than 3,000 Uber passenger assault lawsuits brought by passengers, who say they were sexually harassed, assaulted, kidnaped or raped by drivers, each raising similar allegations that the rideshare service prioritized profits over passenger safety. While most of those cases have been filed in federal court, about 600 claims have also been filed in California state court.

Most of the plaintiffs are women who accuse Uber of failing to take sufficient measures to screen drivers, provide security cameras for Uber vehicles, put its drivers through sexual assault and harassment awareness training, or allow passengers to choose the gender of their driver, while only doing the barest of background checks.

Opening statements began in the San Francisco Superior Court on Monday, involving claims brought by a woman only identified as Jessica C., who will be the first to present evidence and testimony in an open courtroom.

The Uber passenger sexual assault lawsuit alleges that in December 2019, when the plaintiff was only 18, she was traveling home for the holidays from college when her driver turned off the app, pulled over, and sexually assaulted her while pulling her hair through the headrest bars to restrain her.

According to her complaint, the driver only stopped because her phone began going off. He then drove her to the airport, forcing her hand onto his genitals and telling her that he would come to find her.

She reported the incident to police and was treated for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but was unable to continue college.

During the opening statements, plaintiffs’ attorneys noted that Uber has chronically underreported thousands of passenger sexual assaults. For example, in 2019, the year Jessica C. indicates she was assaulted, and 2020, Uber reported receiving 3,824 reports of sexual violence against passengers for those two years. However, her attorneys indicate that, in reality, Uber received 101,915 reports in 2019, and 42,741 incidents in 2020, during the pandemic when use of rideshare services plummeted. Last year, Uber received 85,000 such reports, according to their opening arguments.

Uber claims that many of those incidents were not reported because they were not substantiated.

Federal Uber Passenger Sexual Assault Lawsuits

This first trial is expected to last throughout the rest of the month and will be closely watched to see how the jury will respond to evidence and testimony that is expected to be repeated in thousands of different claims.

However, the bulk of the litigation has been filed in federal court and is centralized for coordinated discovery and pretrial proceedings in the Northern District of California under U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, who expects the first federal Uber passenger sexual assault lawsuit to go before a jury on January 7. That lawsuit will involve claims by Jaylynn Dean, who says she was raped by an Uber driver in Arizona in November 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.

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