Executive Summary: In 2018, the California Supreme Court adopted the “ABC test” for determining whether workers are independent contractors under California wage orders (the Dynamex decision). For a discussion of that decision, please see our May 3, 2018 Alert. The ABC test makes it more difficult in many cases for companies to classify a worker as an independent contractor than under the prior generally-applied common law test. As such, the adoption of the ABC test increases many California employers’ exposure for minimum wage, overtime, meal and rest periods, and other benefits owed to employees but not to independent contractors. On May 2, 2019, in Vasquez v. Jan-Pro Franchising International, Inc., the Ninth Circuit concluded that the ABC test should be applied retroactively to situations that arose before the Dynamex decision came out.