After burning out in corporate call center and health insurance jobs, Gregory Hardin, 42, began driving for Lyft in early 2020. About four years later, he added Uber, earning money from both passenger trips and Uber Eats deliveries.

Roughly two years into driving for Uber, Hardin logged into his account using a new iPhone 16. The company flagged the account for being accessed from another device and deactivated it two weeks after he bought the phone, he said.

“I was thinking, like, ‘Wow, so I do something nice for myself, and it ends up costing me my livelihood,’” Hardin said. “I’m just caught off guard. I have to scramble for my new reality.”

As Hardin contests his deactivation, organizers in Illinois and across the country are seeking broader protections for rideshare workers. In early August, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed a law that allows drivers to unionize and paves the way for an appeals process when they face deactivation.

Uber and Lyft offer appeals, but drivers and their advocates say those processes favor the companies. Between Jan. 1, 2019, and July 20, 2026, about 3.5% of more than 30,000 Chicago rideshare drivers removed from platforms were reinstated, according to city data obtained by Capital & Main.

The data did not specify which platforms deactivated particular drivers. Appeals at Uber and Lyft require drivers to communicate through an app, which can be especially difficult for people who speak English as a second language, said Nathaniel Hudson-Hartman, a rideshare driver and organizer with Drivers Union Oregon.

The Illinois law will let drivers have union representation while contesting their removal. Representatives for Uber and Lyft maintained that their appeals systems are fair and give drivers opportunities to interact with people.

CJ Macklin, a Lyft spokesperson, said the company calls drivers during investigations and sends an email if it cannot reach them by phone. “From day one, we’ve built our policies to help protect drivers, riders, and the broader community,” Macklin said in an emailed statement.

Austen Radcliff, an Uber spokesperson, said people review every deactivation appeal and the company does not rely solely on automated systems. Legislators in Maryland, Washington, Virginia and Ohio have also proposed or passed measures designed to create more transparent deactivation appeals, though those laws do not provide a route to unionization.

Tia Koonse, policy director at the Labor Center of the University of California, Los Angeles, said appeals protections are crucial while some drivers are organizing for union representation and might face retaliation. “You do it to one driver, and then everybody else knows what could happen, and they don’t organize anymore,” she said.

In fall 2022, community groups and unions in Illinois formed the App Drivers Union. Participants included the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, the Independent Drivers Guild, Service Employees International Union and the Chicago Gig Alliance, part of The People’s Lobby.

Chicago records show that 30,881 rideshare drivers were deactivated between Jan. 1, 2019, and July 20, 2026, while only 1,085 were reinstated. Reported reasons included unauthorized account sharing at 30.41%, fraudulent onboarding documents at 26.75% and conduct raising a public safety concern at 21.72%.

Washington already has statewide protections, and the Drivers Union, an association affiliated with Teamsters union Local 117, has helped more than 2,000 drivers return to rideshare apps during the past five years. Even with legal protections, however, challenging a deactivation can take years.

Robert Whitlock discovered in spring 2022 that Uber had suspended his account. During arbitration, he learned the company alleged that a passenger reported the arriving driver did not match the photograph in the app, an accusation Whitlock denied.

Whitlock said his Uber appeal took four years, and he received back pay for lost wages. He also spent two years successfully challenging a Lyft deactivation tied to a customer’s accusation that he used a racial slur, which he denies.

Hardin is still waiting for his Uber appeal to be resolved and estimates the deactivation cut his income by 60%. He moved to Grubhub deliveries, but described that income as “wildly inconsistent,” while continuing to support himself, his girlfriend and her daughter, and his father in a Florida nursing home.

Hardin planned to pursue a commercial learner’s permit in Wisconsin, but he still wants meaningful review for rideshare drivers. “It may not be a big thing to Uber, but it’s a huge thing to a driver.”