/>iEarlier this month, the Governor of the State of New York, Kathy Hochul, approved amendments that establish the amount of damages recoverable for weekly pay violations. The amendments provide for a fraction of the damages that plaintiffs have been seeking for such violations.
The changes to the law are not just effective immediately, but also retroactive, which means they apply to currently pending claims.
New York’s pay frequency law
New York’s pay frequency law, which can be found at section 191 of the New York Labor Law (NYLL), generally requires private employers to pay a “manual worker” not less frequently than weekly and an “other worker” no less frequently than twice a month.
The rise of court claims alleging violations of the pay frequency law
New York’s pay frequency law has been around for over a century, but only recently started to become a popular claim for plaintiffs to assert in court.
In 2019, a New York intermediate appellate court (from our perspective, mistakenly) tied the pay frequency law (NYLL section 191) to a separate section of the NYLL that provides, in part, for a private right of action and 100 percent liquidated damages for underpaid wages (NYLL section 198). That decision, Vega v. CM & Associates Construction Management, LLC, opened the floodgates to lawsuits in New York federal and state courts for pay frequency claims as plaintiffs looked to Vega to insist they could pursue such claims in court and recover the equivalent of all untimely but paid wages again as damages. In many of these cases, the plaintiffs looked to maximize their potential recoveries by arguing they were manual workers who should have been paid weekly, pointing to any physical movement in which they engaged while working, such as walking.
But Vega was not the last word. Last year, in Grant v. Global Aircraft Dispatch, Inc., another New York intermediate appellate court decided the law does not provide a private right of action for pay frequency claims.
To date, neither the Court of Appeals for the State of New York (which is the highest court in the state) nor the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (which has jurisdiction over New York federal courts) has weighed-in on whether there is a private right of action for pay frequency violations, and, if so, how to measure damages. New York courts continue to wrestle with these issues.
The May 2025 amendments to the NYLL
On May 9, 2025, Governor Hochul signed off on an amendment to section 198 of the New York Labor Law that adds a new chapter to the pay frequency saga.
As amended, section 198 says liquidated damages are not available for such manual worker/weekly pay violations absent a prior finding or order that the employer committed such violation. The amendments further state that damages for such violations are lost interest of (no more than) 16 percent for each day a payment is late. Accordingly, the amendments should greatly limit the maximum potential recovery for individuals claiming they are manual workers who were not paid weekly. However, the amendments are notable because they do not expressly apply to non-manual workers, which is something of which employers should be aware.
Finally and importantly, the amendments do not address whether there is a private right of action for violations of the pay frequency law in the first place, or expand the coverage of that law beyond employees already covered.
