New Reports Spotlight Uber’s Campaign to Dodge Accountability and Build a $12.5 Billion Slush Fund

Contact: alex@nejconsult.com

Sacramento Bee and The Lever detail Uber’s federal liability push and a $12.5 billion insurance reserve controlled by company executives

SACRAMENTO — Two new reports published this week by The Sacramento Bee and The Lever shine a spotlight on Uber’s escalating campaign to evade accountability for harm caused on its platform while amassing billions of dollars that could help finance its autonomous vehicle ambitions.

In The Sacramento Bee, reporter Andrew Graham details how Rep. Vince Fong inserted a controversial amendment into a federal transportation bill that would shield ride-hailing companies from liability for harms caused by their drivers, including potentially impacting sexual assault and injury cases currently pending against Uber.

Separately, The Lever reports on a new Consumer Watchdog analysis finding that Uber has accumulated approximately $12.5 billion in a Hawaii-based insurance reserve company controlled by Uber executives. The report raises questions about whether the fund could be used to support Uber’s robotaxi expansion while helping the company avoid taxes and justify efforts to weaken consumer protections.

“Uber is pursuing a coordinated campaign to reduce its legal responsibility while making it harder for injured passengers and sexual assault survivors to seek justice,” said Alex Stack, spokesperson for the Alliance Against Corporate Abuse. “Whether it’s pushing liability protections in Congress, spending millions on a California ballot measure, or lobbying state legislatures across the country, Uber is working to shield itself from the law. The public deserves accountability, not special treatment for one of the world’s most powerful corporations.”

The Alliance Against Corporate Abuse is sponsoring a California ballot measure that would hold rideshare companies accountable for sexual assault and misconduct on their platforms and require stronger passenger safety protections.

• The Sacramento Bee: Uber liability fight spreads to new front: A critical federal transit bill
• The Lever: Uber’s Secret Hawaiian Slush Fund

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

The Sacramento Bee: Uber liability fight spreads to new front: A critical federal transit bill

By Andrew Graham

Ride-hailing company Uber found a new front in its campaign to reduce its liability to lawsuits last month. California U.S. Rep. Vince Fong, R-Bakersfield, introduced a controversial amendment into a key funding bill for the nation’s highways and public transit infrastructure to would sharply limit ride-hailing companies’ responsibility for damages caused by their drivers.

Fong’s amendment, added in a late-night May 22 committee hearing, has drawn fiery opposition from corporate accountability advocacy groups, including famed consumer attorney and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader. In a public letter to Uber’s CEO last week, the now 92-year-old reformer accused Uber of pushing efforts in California and federally to undermine the principles of accountability behind safety improvements ranging from seatbelts and airbags to product liability laws.

“Your company is moving in the opposite direction,” Nader wrote. Uber’s efforts, which include a ballot measure in California designed to limit the fees attorneys can collect and shape the medical claims people injured in car accidents can sue over, “are not technical adjustments to litigation rules,” he wrote. “They represent a fundamental attempt to undermine the rights of injured people and reduce corporate responsibility at the very moment rising autonomous systems are being tested on public roads at scale.”

A spokesperson for Uber did not respond to a request for comment Monday.

Advocacy groups like California’s Consumer Watchdog have accused Uber of trying to weaken regulatory and civil justice protections as it advances a self-driving car initiative comparable to Waymo’s business. California’s Consumer Watchdog is partially funded by trial attorneys waging their own high-dollar political fight to defeat Uber’s ballot measure and open ride-share companies up to increased liability in cases of sexual assault by drivers.

Fong’s amendment would excuse companies from liability for damages to people or property by their drivers, except in cases where the company is grossly negligent or guilty of criminal wrongdoing.

When presenting his amendment to the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Fong described it as an affordability measure, saying frivolous lawsuits are driving up fares for riders.

“These companies are being increasingly targeted by lawsuits seeking massive payouts even when the company itself is not alleged to have done anything wrong,” Fong said. “Even meritless lawsuits are extraordinarily expensive to defend.”

A spokesperson for Fong told The Sacramento Bee the amendment did not prevent states from passing laws requiring enhanced background checks or otherwise increasing driver qualifications for ride-hailing companies. The office did not make Fong available for an interview.

The stakes for Uber

From courtrooms to statehouses to the U.S. Capitol, Uber has been locked in a pitched battle with trial attorneys. The stakes for the company are significant. Changes to liability laws in Georgia and California that Uber successfully advocated for in 2025 will save the company hundreds of millions of dollars a year, the publicly traded company reported in recent filings to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Uber valued insurance reform highly enough to award big bonuses to executives who helmed those efforts. This year, Uber has put up $70 million so far on the California ballot measure campaign to cap attorney fees in car crash cases, and is likely to spend far more as campaigning heats up. Trial attorneys and unaffiliated legal scholars say if passed, such a cap would dissuade attorneys from taking lawsuits on a contingency fee basis, leaving Californians hurt in car crashes shut out of courthouses if they can’t afford to pay an attorney expensive fees up front.

Uber faces the potential of significant new liability through sexual assault and harassment cases.

In April, ballot campaigners from the anti-Uber group Alliance Against Corporate Abuse, which is funded by trial attorneys, announced they had gathered enough signatures to advance a petition that would increase the company’s liability in such cases in California. The measure would also require Uber to put in place new safeguards and increase scrutiny of its drivers. The company faces a wave of such lawsuits already. And while in California advocates and attorneys turned to the voters, in other states policymakers put the company under a microscope after The New York Times reported company executives were aware of the prevalence of harassment and assault allegations against Uber drivers but were slow to implement safeguards.

Fong’s amendment, if it survives to the final bill, is a fail-safe in case California voters go against the company, advocates for the ballot measure here said. The amendment’s wording would allow the company’s lawyers to knock down even ongoing sexual assault lawsuits in court, Alliance Against Corporate Abuse spokesperson Alex Stack said in a news release after its passage.

“Fong is asking Congress to put Uber above the law — and to take the courthouse keys away from assault survivors who have already filed their cases,” Stack said in the release.

In Washington, D.C., Fong has placed his amendment into a bill that funds highways, bridge repairs, public transit and a vast range of other infrastructure projects for the nation’s transportation network across the next five years. The bill, this year dubbed the BUILD America 250 Act, is a must-pass appropriation bill. Lawmakers hitch a wide variety of non-budgetary policy proposals to such legislation, often in a bid to pass measures that might struggle to stand on their own.

The transportation bill has not yet reached the House floor. Opponents hope to persuade lawmakers to strip Fong’s amendment out of the legislation. But they say the rules governing floor debate on such must-pass bills are restrictive. Women lawmakers and sexual assault victim advocacy organizations are frustrated by the amendment, Linda Lipsen, the CEO of American Association for Justice, an advocacy group fighting the amendment, told The Bee.

“They want to cry to Congress and cry to the California voters to get protected when the priority should be on the passengers,” Lipsen said of Uber. “It would sure be nice if the companies would roll up their sleeves and work to try to make sure that they’ve got the safest drivers possible on the road.”

The Lever: Uber’s Secret Hawaiian Slush Fund

A new report alleges Uber has parked $12.5 billion in a Hawaiian shell company that could help finance robotaxis, sidestep taxes, and bankroll efforts to weaken consumer protections.

By Freddy Brewster

Uber, the popular ride-hailing app, has amassed billions of dollars in an alleged dark money slush fund that the company could use not only to fund its robotaxi programs but also to sidestep taxes, according to a new report shared with The Lever.

This comes as Uber has launched a nationwide lobbying campaign to overhaul how car accident victims can sue the company and donated at least $1 million to California gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra.

According to 2026 financial filings, last year, Uber’s executive bonuses and other compensation were contingent upon the success of rolling back these consumer protections. For example, former Vice President Kamala Harris’ brother-in-law, Tony West, Uber’s chief legal officer, received a cash bonus for helping pass “bills in Georgia aimed at limiting damages in lawsuits and reducing insurance premiums, and the passage of SB 371 in California, a landmark compromise that lowers excessive government-mandated insurance costs.” The California bill lowered mandatory insurance coverage for Uber from a $1 million blanket coverage for uninsured and underinsured drivers to just $60,000 per person and $300,000 per accident.

The new report from consumer advocacy group Consumer Watchdog details how the ride-share giant has quietly amassed $12.5 billion in a company-owned insurance reserve, called Aleka Insurance, based in Hawaii. The board of directors and executive committee of Uber’s Hawaiian insurance company consists entirely of current and former Uber executives.

According to the report, Uber’s self-insurance reserves could be funneled toward its multibillion-dollar robotic expansion by pulling it from the insurance company and investing the funds in its robotaxi programs. The insurance funds are also not taxed, since they are set aside as a liability for the company rather than counted as profit. This could allow Uber to use the insurance company as a de facto “tax shelter” by pulling funds out of the insurance company during years “when Uber made a big investment and would have less profit to tax,” according to Consumer Watchdog.

In a statement to The Lever, Uber said its operations are above board.

“Consumer Watchdog is presenting speculation about highly technical insurance accounting concepts as settled fact,” a company spokesperson wrote in an email. “The report represents an inaccurate analysis of our insurance reserves and the role of [Aleka Insurance], and any suggestion that we misrepresented facts surrounding the same is categorically false.”

Uber has sunk a reported $10 billion into self-driving car investments, pitching itself as “uniquely positioned to help autonomous developers deploy and scale their technology globally.” Robotaxis, beset by safety and regulatory concerns, are crucial for Uber’s financial future. The company stated in its annual report that “if we fail to offer autonomous vehicle technologies… our financial performance and prospects would be adversely impacted.”

Uber’s annual report also explicitly states that any legislation requiring deeper background checks for its drivers or reclassifying drivers as company employees (which could grant workers benefits and broader protections) would be detrimental to its bottom line. Uber is also concerned about its drivers unionizing.

“If a significant number of Drivers were to become unionized and collective bargaining agreement terms were to deviate significantly from our business model, our business, financial condition, operating results, and cash flows could be materially adversely affected,” the company stated in its annual report.

Uber has framed its nationwide campaign to roll back insurance requirements and overhaul tort reforms as a necessary step to counter overbearing lawsuits. However, this framing is missing from its legally required financial filings to its shareholders.

“The irony is that while Uber claims it was driven to the ballot box and legislature by unscrupulous billboard attorneys and frivolous lawsuits that are driving up its insurance rates, there is no mention in its annual report of this being the source of increasing insurance expenses,” Consumer Watchdog noted in its report.