The Empower service clearly has a better mousetrap and is serving the needs of both drivers and riders.

I t has been a decade since Uber finally won the right to legally offer rideshares in heavily regulated Washington, D.C., but bureaucrats there are still smarting from having failed to stop it.

So in 2020, when a new ride-hailing service called Empower entered the D.C. market, it faced an even more hostile reception.

Empower’s innovative business model distinguishes it from competitors such as Uber and Lyft by “empowering” drivers with greater autonomy. Drivers work for themselves, set their own fares, and collect 100 percent of the proceeds — paying Empower only a flat monthly rate to use its software. Empower drivers completed over a million rides last month with fares that are on average 20 percent less than Uber’s or Lyft’s. Drivers, who often have to fork over 40 percent or more of a fare to Uber or Lyft, tell me they are better off as well.

Empower insists it’s not actually a ride-hailing service like Uber or Lyft, but rather a technology provider that allows independent drivers to connect with customers, much as people use Expedia to book flights or OpenTable to make restaurant reservations.

But D.C.’s bureaucrats disagree and insist that Empower bend the knee and register as a digital dispatch service and meet specific insurance and fee requirements. Last year, Washington Superior Court Judge Shana Frost Matini imposed daily fines of $25,000 against the company and $5,000 against its CEO for not complying. Last month, she called Joshua Sear “contumacious,” or willfully disobedient, and said she would jail him for contempt of court if he failed to shut down in D.C.

Sear has agreed to shut down — sort of. He will break all of his contracts and offer Empower’s software to drivers for free, and they can keep driving. Judge Matini will decide this week if that gambit will fly.

Empower says that now that Uber and Lyft are the ridesharing incumbents, the D.C. government is trying “to make sure the competition goes away” just as it once tried to protect the local taxi monopoly.

Sear says he could live with Empower failing if it “were out-competed, someone had a better business idea, [or] a better model, [but] this company is not going to fail because of corrupt politicians and absurd, unsupported rulings from a court that are inconsistent with 250 years of jurisprudence.”

While I sympathize with Empower, I believe that even stupid local regulations ultimately must be changed and not just flouted by firms. But D.C.’s shutdown move is draconian and will hurt many lower-income riders and drivers.

Despite any D.C. crackdown on its rides, Empower could continue to operate in neighboring Virginia and Maryland, which have less aggressive enforcement. It also would remain open for business in New York City, Baltimore, and Winston-Salem, N.C., as it negotiates terms of entry there with local officials.

It’s time for their D.C. bureaucratic counterparts to compromise rather than crack down on a company that clearly has a better mousetrap and is serving the needs of both drivers and riders.