A set of laws aimed at protecting third-party delivery drivers in New York City took effect this week after federal judges rejected bids by some of the industry’s largest companies to block parts of the legislation.
The new laws impacting contracted grocery and food delivery workers went into effect Monday, according to a Jan. 26 release from the NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection.
Local Laws 107 and 108 require restaurant and grocery apps to offer users a tipping option at checkout, including a suggested tip of at least 10%, according to DCWP. Among other requirements, Local Laws 123 and 124 expand the minimum pay rate for delivery workers to include 3PD grocery delivery workers and improve bathroom access for contracted delivery workers.
DoorDash and Uber challenged Local Laws 107 and 108 by filing a federal lawsuit against DCWP in 2025.
According to a Jan. 23 Reuters report, U.S. District Judge George Daniels ruled against the requests for a preliminary injunction, stating that the delivery giants did not demonstrate a clear likelihood that suggesting a minimum 10% tip before customers place orders violates their constitutional free speech rights. DoorDash and Uber argued that the tipping disclosure rule would discourage customers who are troubled by “tipping fatigue” from ordering.
“Forcing platforms to solicit a tip before checkout at a time when New Yorkers are sick of tipping culture and facing a growing affordability crisis is bad policy,” a spokesperson for DoorDash said in the Reuters report.
In a Jan. 13 release, DCWP Commissioner Samuel A.A. Levine supported Local Laws 107 and 108 by stating that 3PD companies implemented “design tricks that depressed tips by the hundreds of millions” after NYC began enforcing a minimum pay rate for contracted delivery drivers in 2023.
Such “tricks,” according to DCWP, included practices that hid or delayed tipping prompts, which reportedly cost workers over $550 million in tips.
“This may seem like a procedural change, but the effect has been devastating for so many across the city,” NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani said during a Jan. 15 press conference in Brooklyn. “The average DoorDash or Uber tip as a result of this change dropped from what was $3.66 per delivery to a mere $0.93.”
Similarly, in a separate case, U.S. District Judge John Koeltl rejected Instacart’s argument regarding Local Laws 123 and 124. The argument claimed New York’s state legislature did not allow the city to mandate the tipping option and require grocery delivery apps to offer delivery workers the same minimum pay as restaurant delivery workers. Reuters reported that Instacart shared that raising worker pay could lead to higher grocery delivery costs.
Earlier in January, Levine announced a lawsuit against the restaurant delivery management platform Motoclick and said that compliance warnings were sent to over 60 companies — including DoorDash, Uber, Grubhub and Instacart — advising them to adhere to the new laws.
