Uber Technologies and Lyft Inc. have agreed to jointly pay $175 million to settle thousands of sexual assault lawsuits brought by passengers in 14 states, according to court documents filed Tuesday in the Northern District of California.
The settlement, which must still receive final court approval, would resolve claims dating back to 2017 from passengers who allege they were sexually assaulted or harassed by drivers on one or both platforms.
Scale of the Litigation
The consolidated litigation involves more than 4,800 individual claimants. Uber’s own safety report, published in 2023, disclosed that approximately 3,824 sexual assault incidents were reported on its platform in a two-year period. A similar report from Lyft reported nearly 1,200 incidents between 2017 and 2019.
Plaintiffs argued that both companies knew their background check systems were inadequate and failed to implement available safety technologies — such as continuous background monitoring and real-time GPS alerts — that could have prevented repeat offenders from operating on their platforms.
The Settlement Terms
Under the proposed settlement, funds will be distributed to claimants based on a tiered system accounting for severity of assault, documented emotional and psychological harm, and whether the driver was criminally charged. Individual payments are estimated to range from $7,500 for harassment claims to over $150,000 for severe assault cases.
Both companies denied liability as part of the settlement agreement.
Safety Changes
As part of negotiations, both Uber and Lyft agreed to implement annual background checks (up from every seven years), add in-app panic buttons with direct 911 audio streaming, and share known bad-actor driver data across platforms — a change consumer advocates have sought for years.