{"id":10305,"date":"2026-04-15T13:18:42","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T13:18:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/new-york-senate-re-introduces-bill-to-prohibit-certain-non-compete-agreements\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T13:18:42","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T13:18:42","slug":"new-york-senate-re-introduces-bill-to-prohibit-certain-non-compete-agreements","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/new-york-senate-re-introduces-bill-to-prohibit-certain-non-compete-agreements\/","title":{"rendered":"New York Senate Re-Introduces Bill To Prohibit Certain Non-Compete Agreements"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n
\n

On April 6, 2026, New York State Senator Michael Gianaris re-introduced a bill that would prohibit most non-compete agreements between employers and employees in New York State.\u00a0 As we have previously described, on June 20, 2023, the state legislature passed S3100, which banned non-compete agreements for nearly all employees regardless of annual earnings, applied both retroactively and prospectively, voided new and existing non-compete agreements, and gave covered employees a private right of action against employers with liquidated damages up to $10,000.\u00a0 On December 22, 2023, New York Governor Kathy Hochul vetoed S3100, having unsuccessfully sought to narrow the scope of the bill by eliminating non-compete agreements only for low- and middle-wage earners.<\/p>\n

In response to Governor Hochul\u2019s veto, on February 10, 2025, New York State Senator Sean Ryan introduced a revised bill (S4641) that narrowed the scope of covered individuals and its application.\u00a0 As explained here, this bill would only apply prospectively and to \u201chighly compensated individuals\u201d earning $500,000 or more in cash compensation per year.\u00a0 S4641 also banned non-compete agreements for \u201chealth related professionals\u201d regardless of annual compensation.\u00a0 Under the legislation, fixed-term agreements, exclusivity agreements, and other restrictive covenants would remain lawful.\u00a0 S4641 maintained the private right of action from S3100, which would allow covered individuals to void non-compete agreements and seek liquidated damages against their employer up to $10,000 plus attorneys\u2019 fees within a specific period.\u00a0 For permissible non-compete agreements, S4641 imposed certain statutory conditions, including that the agreement\u2019s term of restriction not exceed one year and that the employer offer one year of paid garden leave.\u00a0 Although these revisions hewed more closely to Governor Hochul\u2019s preferred approach, the bill never advanced beyond the Assembly Labor Committee during the 2025 legislative session.<\/p>\n

The new iteration of the bill (S9759) is substantively identical to S4641.\u00a0 S9759 is currently in the Senate Labor Committee.\u00a0 Since the bill was introduced by Senator Gianaris, there has been no public commentary from either the state legislature or the governor on the bill\u2019s likelihood of success.\u00a0 Because S4641 was never presented to Governor Hochul, whether S9759 will be a legislative priority in the 2026 legislative session is unclear.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On April 6, 2026, New York State Senator Michael Gianaris re-introduced a bill that would prohibit most non-compete agreements between employers and employees in New York State.\u00a0 As […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10306,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[718,307,454,7301,7732,515,326],"class_list":["post-10305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-agreements","tag-bill","tag-noncompete","tag-prohibit","tag-reintroduces","tag-senate","tag-york"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10305\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}