Uber board sued over claims it ignored sexual assault warnings

Uber’s board is facing a shareholder suit that recasts the company’s growth story as a corporate-governance failure. The complaint, filed in San Francisco federal court, says directors and management knowingly cut compliance corners to push expansion, and that those choices helped create the conditions for thousands of sexual-assault and harassment lawsuits. Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi is named as a defendant, underscoring how deeply the case reaches into Uber’s top leadership.

The shareholders, led by a Detroit pension fund, say the board ignored repeated internal and external warnings about Uber’s response to sexual abuse by drivers. That allegation goes to the core of what directors are supposed to do: oversee risk, insist on compliance systems and make sure management does not treat safety controls as optional expenses. In this case, investors are arguing that compliance was not pushed aside by accident, but sacrificed in a bid to prioritize growth, market share and speed.

Uber’s own safety reporting shows why the issue remains so sensitive. The company says its U.S. Safety Reports cover the most serious incidents on the rideshare platform, including sexual assaults, and it has published reports for 2017-2018 and 2021-2022. Separate reporting and court filings have said Uber received 400,181 reports of sexual assault or misconduct in the United States from 2017 to 2022, far above the 12,522 serious incidents Uber publicly acknowledged in its safety reports. The U.S. House Oversight Committee said that reporting raised questions about how Uber identifies, responds to and discloses incidents of sexual assault and sexual misconduct.

The legal exposure is no longer theoretical. On February 5, 2026, a federal jury in Phoenix ordered Uber to pay $8.5 million in a case brought by a woman who said she was raped by a driver, the first plaintiff victory in the federal multidistrict litigation. That verdict could influence thousands of similar cases. Public reports in June 2026 said the consolidated federal MDL had grown to more than 3,000 cases, with some outlets putting the figure at 3,571 active cases, and a third bellwether trial was set for September 14, 2026, in a Fort Worth woman’s case.

For investors, the lawsuit is about more than damages. A board-level case can reshape confidence in Uber’s controls, deepen scrutiny of its safety culture and invite tougher questions from regulators watching how platform companies manage risk. Even under new leadership, the litigation suggests the cost of earlier governance failures is still working its way through the company’s balance sheet and reputation.