First, thanks for responding!

> So your argument is about who could overrule who, but that is a secondary question.

This is related, I guess, but I see my argument as being about something different. The claim of the ruling seems to be that:

(I) The Legislature has the unlimited power to determine who does and who doesn't get worker's comp.

(II) The Legislature has, using their discretion, given worker's comp to one category of worker (employees) and withheld worker's comp from another category of worker (contractors).

(III) Therefore, no other group has the power to determine who belongs to which category, because that would interfere with the Legislature's power to determine who has worker's comp.

But I don't think this works. Suppose the Legislature managed to get Proposition 209 repealed and subsequently determined that blacks receive worker's comp and whites don't. The implication of this ruling is that an initiative defining who is black and who is white would be invalid because that would interfere with the Legislature's power to define the worker's compensation scheme they want.

And this is true in general - the Legislature's power to determine who gets worker's comp now automatically includes the power to determine who belongs to any category, as long as they first decide to award worker's comp to that category, or to withhold it from that category. [1]

I don't see why the ability to use a category when describing the worker's compensation scheme necessarily includes the very different power to take control of the definition of that category.

For a different hypothetical, suppose that all workers employed in driving were already ineligible for worker's comp. Proposition 22 then would have had no impact on who was eligible for worker's comp. There's no difficulty with a "dormant commerce clause"-style argument that it should be invalid anyway because, even though the Legislature hasn't yet extended worker's compensation to drivers, they might do so in the future. But it seems to me that, in order to make that argument, you would first have to argue that it is impossible for the Legislature to extend worker's compensation to independent contractors -- otherwise, what's the difference between discretionarily extending worker's comp to driving employees before Prop 22 and discretionarily extending it to driving contractors after Prop 22?

[1] I'm having difficulty forming the hypotheticals I really want because the body given unlimited power over worker's comp in this case is the official legislature, which tends to make examples sound less ridiculous than I think they should, as the legislature already possesses most other legislative powers. But with so much being rested here specifically on their power over worker's comp (since that power is immune to statutory propositions and most others aren't), I think it's worth separating them conceptually. What if the constitution endowed a separate body, the "California Worker's Compensation Authority", with this plenary power? Then by this ruling, the official legislature would no longer have the power to define who is an independent contractor and who isn't -- that would interfere with the constitutional grant of authority to the CWCA. But I suspect the CWCA also wouldn't have the power to define who is an independent contractor. Who would?