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NY State Legislative Advocacy Update

The Law Center had a number of successes in the 2025 New York State Legislative Session, with several bills that we supported passing and others either coming close or making significant progress compared to previous years.  Here are the highlights:

Bills That Passed Both Houses

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Bills That Passed Both Houses *

  • This would protect domestic violence victims whose abusers stole their identity or forced them to take out credit for the abuser to use, by preventing debt collection or credit reporting of such “coerced debts.”  The bill passed the Legislature, but the Governor has not yet signed it.  The financial services industry is lobbying the Governor to make “chapter amendments” that would weaken the bill.  We think she should sign it essentially as it is with at most minor changes.

  • This would reform the State’s process for contracting with nonprofits like the Law Center.  Among other improvements on the current system, it would eliminate the common practice where nonprofits provide services but go unpaid for extended periods of time because of delays in the State’s providing them with a contract to sign.  Because nonprofits often have to use credit and incur interest due to State delays in paying them, this reform would make a significant difference to the finances of ourselves and other nonprofits that provide services under State contracts.  The bill passed the Legislature, but the Governor has not signed it yet.

  • This bill would prohibit most employers from relying on credit history in deciding whether to hire or promote employees.  This ban already exists in New York City.  The bill passed the Legislature, but the Governor has not yet signed it.

Bills that Passed One House

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Bills that Passed One House *

  • This bill would codify the  Homeownership Protection Program, which provides a large share of the Law Center’s funding, as a State program.  Every year the Law Center and other foreclosure prevention advocates have to lobby to continue their funding; by making this an official state program this would ensure presumptive funding with a budget line item.  In 2024 the bill passed the Legislature but Governor Hochul vetoed it, saying codification should be addressed as part of the State Budget process.  Codification of the program was proposed by the Houses in their 2025 budget proposals but was not enacted as part of the final budget. 

    In 2025 this separate bill again passed the Senate but this time the Assembly understandably did not prioritize passing it.

  • this bill would require utilities to create home insulation upgrade programs that would not burden low-income customers. 

    It passed the Senate but died in Assembly, which also happened in 2024.

  • This bill would reduce the interest rate on defaulted property taxes from the current range of 12-18% (in Erie County it is 18%) to instead be tied to the much lower prime rate and also capped at 16%. 

    In 2024 the bill passed the Legislature but Governor Hochul vetoed it, saying the issue should be addressed as part of the State Budget process.  It wasn’t though, and the bill again passed the Senate in 2025, but not the Assembly.

  • This bill would allow homeowners to enforce our State’s mortgage servicing regulations, using a servicer’s violation of them as a defense to foreclosure or as the basis for a separate lawsuit. 

    The bill passed the Senate but died in the Assembly, as happens almost every year.

  • This bill would protect private student loan borrowers, including providing a path to remove cosigners from their loans, and prohibiting lenders from accelerating the loan because a cosigner died or filed bankruptcy. 

    The bill passed the Senate but died in the Assembly.

  • Currently a downstate tenant can sue their landlord, for things like withholding a security deposit, in the small claims court where the property they rented is located, even if the landlord is based out of town, but upstate small claims jurisdiction only exists if the landlord is local.  This bill would eliminate that disparity. 

    It passed the Senate but died in the Assembly.

  • This bill would require judges sitting in the most active Town and Village Courts to be attorneys.  Currently no Town or Village Court requires its judges to be attorneys. 

    The bill passed the Senate but died in the Assembly.

  • This bill would extend existing protections under the Consumer Credit Fairness Act to all consumers facing debt collection in court instead of only to those whose debts fall within the definition of a “Consumer Credit Transaction,” which some courts have read to require that there have been an agreement in advance to accept payment in installments.  Most debt collection protections, such as those under the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, applies to all consumer debts and are not limited in this way. 

    The bill passed the Assembly but died in the Senate.

Bills that Made Progress

  • End Loan Sharking Act, A4918/S1726

    This bill would eliminate loopholes and ambiguity in New York’s strong usury protections by making clear that New York’s 16% civil and 25% criminal interest rate caps apply any time credit is extended, no matter what the parties call it or how they document it. 

    The bill made it out of committee in the Senate and onto the Senate Floor Calendar.  This is the farthest it has ever proceeded towards becoming a law.

  • Arbitration Accountability, A3318/S926

    This bill would require private arbitration organizations, which hear many consumer disputes, to publish data about the cases they handle. 

    The bill made it out of committee in the Assembly and onto the Assembly Floor Calendar.

It’s Complicated

  • Fostering Affordability and Integrity through Reasonable (“FAIR”) Business Practices Act, A8427/S8416

    This bill would have banned unfair and abusive business practices and allowed consumers to enforce that ban in court, like 42 other states do.  It would have also removed a judge-created limitation on New York’s current deceptive practices law that limits consumers to suing only for deceptive practices that potentially have a broad impact on the public at large beyond the individual consumer who was lied to (the “consumer oriented” requirement).  The Law Center supported a previous version of this bill, the Consumer and Small business Protection Act (“CSPA”) for many years.  The FAIR Act was introduced by the New York Attorney General and combined CSPA’s provisions with additional new powers to be granted to the Attorney General.  The bill was amended at the last minute to limit the ability to file lawsuits about unfair practices to just the Attorney General and not individual private citizens and also to provide legislative approval of the “consumer oriented” limitation for the first time ever.  With these unfortunate amendments the bill passed both houses at the very end of the legislative session.  Governor Hochul previously included a version of CSPA in her proposed State Budget that would have allowed individual consumers to enforce the prohibition on unfair business practices.  We are hopeful that she might modify the bill through chapter amendments to eliminate the harmful limitations that were included in those last-minute amendments.   

    Call to Action:  Contact the Governor’s Office and tell the Governor to:

    ·         sign the Coerced Debt Bill (A3038/S1353) without any major changes;

    ·         sign the Contracting Reform bill (A7616/S7001);

    ·         sign the bill to end the use of credit checks in employment (A1316/S3072);

    ·         modify the FAIR Act (A8427/S8416) through chapter amendments to eliminate the “consumer oriented” requirement and allow private citizens to enforce the ban on unfair practices;

    ·         codify the HOPP program and reduce the interest rate on defaulted property taxes in next year’s Budget.