New York’s Anti-Waiver of Employment Rights Act: What Workers Need to Know

New York workers may soon get a powerful new tool for protecting their rights under the state’s wage and hour and anti-discrimination laws. The Anti-Waiver of Employment Rights Act (Senate Bill S4424-A, sponsored by Senator Jessica Ramos, and Assembly Bill A5411-A, sponsored by Assemblymember Harry Bronson) passed both houses of the New York Legislature on May 13, 2026. The Assembly passed it with stunning bipartisan support, by a vote of 135-2. It now awaits action from Governor Kathy Hochul.

New York’s legislative custom often “calls up” passed bills for the Governor’s signature in batches, frequently near the end of the calendar year. There’s still time to make the case for why she should sign it.

“This bill passed with overwhelming, bipartisan support because the underlying facts are indefensible. Employers have been stacking the deck against their own employees, burying patently unfair contract provisions in paperwork that workers are required to accept just to get the job. This law puts a stop to it.”

Christopher Marlborough, Board Member and Legislative Advocacy Co-Chair, National Employment Lawyers Association – New York Affiliate (NELA/NY)

What the Anti-Waiver Act Does

The Problem It Targets

For years, some employers have buried provisions in employment applications and offer letters that strip away workers’ legal protections before a dispute ever arises. The most common tactic: clauses that shorten how long an employee has to bring a claim. A worker who would otherwise have three years (or six) to sue for unpaid wages or unpaid overtime might find that their paperwork cut that window down to six months. They never got a chance to negotiate the term.

What the Bill Changes

The Anti-Waiver Act would add new provisions to the New York Labor Law (Section 219-e) and the New York State Human Rights Law (Section 302). Together, they make clear that:

• Private agreements cannot waive or limit rights, remedies, and claims under the NYLL and NYSHRL, whether the waiver is written into the contract directly or just implied.
• Contractual provisions that shorten an employee’s statute of limitations for these claims are invalid.
• Contractual provisions requiring workers to waive their right to act collectively with other workers in a class or collective action are invalid, unless federal law preempts them.
• Contractual provisions requiring workers to waive their right to bring their case in court are invalid, unless federal law preempts them.
• Collective bargaining agreements remain unaffected. Workers can still voluntarily settle claims or sign severance agreements after a dispute arises.
• The law doesn’t apply where federal law preempts it, which covers most arbitration agreements and the class action waivers packaged inside them.
• The law includes a severability provision. If a court strikes down one part, the rest of the law stays in force.

The Class Action Waiver Mechanics

One provision deserves its own explanation: the bill would ban standalone, pre-dispute class action waivers. These are class action waivers that exist outside of an arbitration agreement. Right now, some employers require workers to give up their right to bring or join a class action as a plain contract term, with no arbitration requirement attached. The Anti-Waiver Act would void that practice.

Here’s why that distinction matters. The bill exempts anything federal law preempts, and the Federal Arbitration Act generally shields arbitration agreements, including the class action waivers built into them, from state interference. So employers who currently use standalone class action waivers would have an incentive to start bundling them into arbitration agreements instead. That’s likely the one place a class action waiver would still survive. In other words: the same waiver that’s banned on its own could still work if an employer writes it into an arbitration clause covered by the FAA.

Why the Anti-Waiver Act Is Needed Now

New York Courts Have Split on the Issue

Some New York courts have upheld severely shortened limitations periods. In one case, an appeals court called it “inherently reasonable” for an employer to cut a discrimination claim’s filing window from three years down to six months. Another case enforced a provision limiting the time to bring any employment claim to just six months, and dismissed the worker’s Human Rights Law claims as a result.

Federal courts sitting in New York have gone the other way. They’ve consistently held that similar shortening provisions are void as against public policy under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. That creates an uneven playing field: the same underlying conduct gets treated differently depending on which statute a worker sues under. The Anti-Waiver Act closes that gap and puts NYLL and NYSHRL claims on the same footing as their federal counterparts.

Other States Are Confronting the Same Problem

New York isn’t alone here. New Jersey went further than court rulings alone: N.J.S.A. 10:5-12(r) makes it an unlawful employment practice to require a worker to consent to a shortened statute of limitations. The New Jersey Supreme Court separately struck down such a clause in Rodriguez v. Raymours Furniture Co. (2016).

The Michigan Supreme Court recently overturned decades of precedent that had made shortened filing deadlines in employment paperwork automatically enforceable. In Rayford v. American House Roseville I, LLC (2025), the court held that judges must now scrutinize boilerplate acknowledgment forms and applications for basic fairness before enforcing them.

At the federal level, the Sixth Circuit held in Boaz v. FedEx Customer Information Services, Inc. (2013) that employees cannot waive their FLSA rights by contract at all, including through a shortened filing deadline. Federal district courts within the Second Circuit, which covers New York, reached the same conclusion on FLSA claims specifically. That includes Castellanos v. Raymours Furniture Co., 291 F. Supp. 3d 294 (E.D.N.Y. 2018), where the court severed the shortened limitations period from the parties’ arbitration agreement.

Legal scholars have raised similar concerns. A 2024 law review article on Title VII discrimination claims argues that shortened-limitations clauses are fundamentally unfair, given the power imbalance between an applicant and an employer at the moment of hiring. A worker rarely has any realistic chance to negotiate boilerplate paperwork stapled to a job offer.

A Timely Boost for the Anti-Waiver Act From the Court of Appeals

Just one day before the Legislature sent the bill forward, the New York Court of Appeals issued a decision that reinforces exactly what the Anti-Waiver Act is meant to codify. In Walton v. Comfort Systems USA (Syracuse), Inc., decided June 23, 2026, New York’s highest court unanimously held that a contract clause shortening the time limit for prevailing-wage claims under Labor Law § 220 was unenforceable. The underlying right came from the statute itself, not from anything the parties negotiated. So a private contract couldn’t cut it short.

The reasoning in Walton lines up closely with the goal of the Anti-Waiver Act. When the Legislature creates a right for workers’ protection, employers shouldn’t get to use contract terms (especially ones workers had no real chance to negotiate) to quietly take that right away. But Walton only addressed prevailing-wage claims narrowly. It doesn’t reach every type of waiver, and it doesn’t override the older appellate decisions that went the other way on NYLL and NYSHRL claims generally. That’s exactly the gap the Anti-Waiver Act is designed to close.

A Get-Out-of-Jail-Free Card for Wage Thieves

Testimony From the Front Lines

I testified before the New York State Legislature’s joint hearing on Current Patterns in White-Collar Crime and Fraud, and Possible Updates to Laws Protecting New Yorkers and Markets, held March 4, 2026 before the Senate Standing Committees on Codes and Consumer Protection. I spoke about how these waivers function in practice, and it’s rarely as simple as a legitimate employer protecting itself from stale claims. In my experience representing workers, the employers most aggressive about stacking these provisions into their paperwork tend to be the ones with the most to hide.

How the Scheme Works

Here’s how it works. An employer sets up a fraudulent independent contractor scheme, classifying workers who are, in every functional sense, employees. That lets the employer avoid paying minimum wage, overtime, and payroll taxes, and sidestep basic protections like workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance. Then, buried in the same “independent contractor agreement” the worker has to sign just to start the job, the employer adds a class action waiver, a shortened statute of limitations, and a forced arbitration clause. All three go in before any dispute has even happened.

Why That’s So Dangerous

The more illegal the underlying scheme, the more valuable these waivers become to the employer running it. A misclassified worker typically doesn’t find out until much later, sometimes not until tax season, sometimes not until they get hurt on the job and discover they have no workers’ compensation coverage. By the time they realize what happened, a shortened limitations period may have already run out.

The class action waiver compounds the problem. It bars workers from banding together, so an employer stealing from a hundred workers only has to worry about the rare individual who discovers the scheme, hires a lawyer, and forces arbitration alone, win or lose, in private, off the public record. For a dishonest employer, that’s a trade worth making.

That’s why the Anti-Waiver Act matters beyond any single clause it invalidates. It closes off a strategy that lets the worst-behaving employers use their own contract paperwork as a shield, insulating illegal conduct from the very legal processes meant to catch it.

Watching the Anti-Waiver Act Debate: How Skepticism Turned Into Support

Bill sponsor Assemblymember Harry Bronson wasn’t the only one who made the case for this legislation on the Assembly floor. Assemblymember Mary Beth Walsh, the Assembly Minority Leader Pro Tempore and a practicing attorney of over 30 years, questioned Bronson closely during the May 13 floor debate. The exchange is worth watching in full.

Walsh opened skeptically. She pointed out how much New York has already done to protect workers from one-sided contract terms, and pressed Bronson on why this bill was needed on top of existing law. She initially framed her concern around freedom of contract: sophisticated, represented employees negotiating written agreements, she argued, should be able to bargain for themselves without the state stepping in.

Bronson’s answer shifted the terms of the debate. He explained that courts have found an ordinary job application itself can count as an employment agreement. Under that theory, courts have upheld provisions cutting a six-year statute of limitations down to as little as six months, changes he described as reductions of 87 to 95 percent.

That answer visibly changed Walsh’s thinking in real time. She called the practice “seems egregious.” By the end of the exchange, she told Bronson she planned to support the bill, drawing a distinction between an executive negotiating a contract with counsel present and a worker who unknowingly signs away rights just by filling out a job application. The bill passed the Assembly by an overwhelming bipartisan vote of 135-2.

It’s a rare thing to watch a legislator’s position change live on the floor. It’s also a strong signal for Governor Hochul: even members who instinctively favor keeping government out of private contracts found the underlying facts too hard to defend.

What the Anti-Waiver Act Means for New York Workers

Did you sign an employment application, offer letter, or agreement that included a clause shortening your time to bring a wage or discrimination claim? That provision may not hold up, regardless of whether the Anti-Waiver Act becomes law. Courts increasingly recognize that these statutory protections belong to workers, not to whatever fine print an employer inserted into hiring paperwork.

Christopher Marlborough, Board Member and Legislative Advocacy Co-Chair of the National Employment Lawyers Association – New York Affiliate (NELA/NY), has testified before the New York State Legislature in support of the Anti-Waiver of Employment Rights Act and related worker-protection legislation.

Support the Anti-Waiver Act

The Anti-Waiver of Employment Rights Act passed the Legislature by a wide margin and now sits waiting for Governor Hochul’s signature. If you believe New York workers deserve these protections, contact Governor Hochul’s office and urge her to sign the Anti-Waiver of Employment Rights Act into law.