Does the state law replace New York City's version?

No, and the statute says so in as many words. General Business Law section 1415(5) provides that Article 44-A shall not be construed or interpreted to override or supplant any of the provisions of chapter ten of title twenty of the administrative code of the city of New York, which is the city's Freelance Isn't Free chapter. Both sit on the books. For a job with a New York City hiring party the practical difference is procedural rather than substantive: the city route runs through the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, which will send your complaint to the hiring party and give them 20 days to answer, while the state route runs through the Attorney General. Read on 19 August 2026.

My contract has no payment date at all. What is the deadline?

Thirty days after you finish, under both. Section 1411(1)(b) of the General Business Law says that where the contract does not specify when the hiring party must pay or the mechanism by which that date will be determined, the compensation is due no later than thirty days after completion of the freelance worker's services. DCWP states the city rule in the same terms on its freelance workers page. That does not make a missing date harmless, because it moves the argument onto when the services were completed instead, which is exactly the sort of thing an acceptance clause is supposed to settle.

Can I file a complaint and sue?

On the state side, yes. Section 1414(4) says nothing in it prohibits a person alleging a violation from filing a civil action based on the same facts as a civil action commenced by the Attorney General. Section 1414(2)(d) adds a step people miss: within ten days of starting your own civil action you are to serve a copy of the complaint on an authorised representative of the Attorney General, and failing to do so does not adversely affect your cause of action. The city side runs the other way round on sequence. DCWP's FAQ says a freelance worker may file with DCWP or go directly to court, but a worker who sues first puts the claim outside DCWP's jurisdiction and is asked to give DCWP a copy of the court complaint. If you want the city complaint process, use it before you sue rather than after.

New York Freelance Isn't Free Act: Two Laws, One Invoice

Q: Is a $600 job covered?

Only if other work for the same client pushes it over $800. Section 1410(3) defines a freelance worker as one hired for an amount equal to or greater than eight hundred dollars, either by itself or when aggregated with all contracts for services between the same hiring party and freelance worker during the immediately preceding one hundred twenty days. Three $600 jobs for one client inside a four-month window are past the line; three $600 jobs for three different clients are not. The city applies the same $800 figure over any 120-day period.

Payment upon completion of services. Four words, and on a lot of New York contracts that is the entire payment section. No date, no net terms, no mechanism for arriving at one. Read on its own it looks like a promise with no deadline attached, and a client who takes eleven weeks has not obviously broken anything the document says.

The document is not the only thing in play. Since 2017 in New York City, and since August 2024 everywhere else in the state, a statute fills that blank at thirty days.

Both statutes are called the Freelance Isn't Free Act, which is most of why the subject is hard to search. They are not the same law, the city one came first, and the state one did not switch it off. Nearly everything written about either is addressed to the people doing the hiring. So the first thing to establish is which of the two you are standing on, because they send your paperwork to different buildings.

I am not a lawyer and none of this is legal advice. Every figure below is linked to the text it came from, with the date it was read.

Two laws, and the state statute says so itself

New York City's version is Local Law 140 of 2016, in effect since 15 May 2017, sitting in Title 20, Chapter 10 of the Administrative Code and enforced by the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP, read on 19 August 2026).

The statewide version added Article 44-A to the General Business Law with effect from 28 August 2024 (NYS Department of Labor, read on 19 August 2026). Six sections are the whole of it, and their own headings are the outline: definitions (1410), contracted compensation payments (1411), written contracts (1412), discrimination prohibited (1413), violations (1414), additional rights (1415).

That last one settles the relationship between the two. Section 1415(5) says the article "shall not be construed or interpreted to override or supplant any of the provisions of chapter ten of title twenty of the administrative code of the city of New York." The same section voids any contract term purporting to waive rights under the article, and states that failure to comply does not make the contract itself void or voidable. So a hiring party who never gave you a written contract cannot use that as a reason not to pay you.

Subsection 4 is worth memorising if you have ever worried about being reclassified on the back of a complaint: no provision of the article "shall be construed as providing a determination about the legal classification of any such worker as an employee or independent contractor." Using the law does not decide the classification question either way.

The $800 test counts backwards, 120 days at a time

Section 1410(3) defines a freelance worker as a natural person, or a one-person organisation whether or not incorporated, retained as an independent contractor for $800 or more — either on the one contract, or "when aggregated with all contracts for services between the same hiring party and freelance worker during the immediately preceding one hundred twenty days."

Count backwards from today rather than forwards from the job. Four $250 pieces for the same magazine inside four months is a $1,000 relationship, over the line. The same four spread across thirteen months are four uncovered jobs. DCWP applies the identical $800 figure over any 120-day period on the city side. If the client sits in Illinois instead, the comparable line is drawn at $500 over the same 120 days, under a different statute with a different complaint route.

Four categories are carved out of the state definition: sales representatives as defined in Labor Law section 191-a, anyone practising law under the contract at issue, licensed medical professionals, and construction contractors.

The city's list of who is not covered is close but not the same list. DCWP's published FAQ names employees, anyone who agreed to work for no pay, sales representatives, attorneys, licensed medical professionals, and anyone hired by a federal, state, local or foreign government — construction contractors are not on it (DCWP, Freelance Isn't Free Act: FAQ, question 4, read on 19 August 2026). If you build things for a living, which of the two laws you are under stops being a technicality.

The exclusion that catches people out is on the other side of the deal. Under section 1410(4) a hiring party is anyone who retains a freelance worker other than the United States government, the State of New York and its agencies, a municipality, or a foreign government. DCWP's definition excludes government on the city side too, so public clients sit outside both laws rather than one of them. If you invoice a city agency, a state university or a school district, your deadline comes from that body's prompt payment rules and from what your own payment terms count from, not from Article 44-A.

What the written contract has to contain

Section 1412 requires the contract to be reduced to writing, furnished to you physically or electronically, and kept by both sides. The minimum contents:

name and mailing address of both parties;
an itemisation of the services, the value of those services, and the rate and method of compensation;
the date the hiring party must pay, or the mechanism for determining that date;
the date by which you must submit a list of services rendered, so that the client's internal processing deadlines still allow payment on the agreed date.

That fourth item is the one the city law never asked for: DCWP's FAQ lists six required terms and stops at the payment date, while the state adds the deadline for your own list of services. It is there because most late payments at a client of any size are not decisions. They are a cut-off missed by two days in a system nobody described. Paragraph (d) makes the client name that cut-off in advance. Ask for it in writing and half of the "it went into next month's run" conversation stops happening.

Section 1412(3) is the sleeper. The hiring party must keep the contract for six years and produce it to the Attorney General on request, and failure to keep or produce it "shall give rise to a presumption that the terms that the freelance worker has presented are the agreed upon terms." In an argument about what was actually agreed, the party with no paperwork starts behind.

Section 1412(4) required the Commissioner of Labor to publish free model contracts, in English and the twelve languages most commonly spoken by limited English proficient individuals in the state. The English one is a six-page fill-in-the-blanks Freelance Worker Agreement (read on 19 August 2026) with initials boxes on every page, tick-box payment methods including three dated instalment lines, and a term under which the hiring party will respond to you within three business days of contact. It is plainer than anything a client will send you, and nothing stops you lifting clauses out of it into your own template.

Double damages attach to non-payment, not to the missing contract

This is the distinction most summaries flatten, and flattening it costs money.

Section 1411 is the payment obligation: pay on or before the date in the contract, or, if the contract names neither a date nor a mechanism for setting one, no later than 30 days after completion. Subsection 2 blocks a specific move. Once you have started work, the client cannot require you to accept less than the contracted amount as a condition of being paid on time. The discount-for-speed phone call is written into the statute as a violation.

Section 1414 then splits the remedies:

What you prove	What section 1414 gives you
Non-payment (s.1411)	Damages, double damages, injunctive relief, plus reasonable attorneys' fees and costs
No written contract, and nothing else alleged (s.1412)	Statutory damages of $250
A written-contract claim won alongside another violation	Statutory damages equal to the value of the underlying contract, on top of the remedies for the other violations
Retaliation (s.1413, headed Discrimination prohibited)	Statutory damages equal to the contract value, for each violation

The trap sits in section 1414(2)(e): a plaintiff who alleges only a written-contract violation "must prove that such plaintiff requested a written contract before the contracted work began." A request sent after the job is finished does not build that record. One dated email before you start does.

Separately, the Attorney General may bring an action in the name of the People for injunctive relief and restitution, with civil penalties of up to $1,000 for a first violation, $2,000 for a second and $3,000 for a third or subsequent one. Section 1414(5) adds one that does not need the Attorney General at all. In any civil action commenced under section 1414, the trier of fact may impose a civil penalty of up to $25,000 on a finding that the hiring party has engaged in a pattern or practice of violations. Read the last line of that subsection before the number gets exciting: the penalty "shall be paid into the general fund," not to you. The city has the same idea in a different shape. DCWP states that where there is evidence of a pattern or practice, the Corporation Counsel may bring a civil action to recover a civil penalty of not more than $25,000.

Deadlines under the state article, from section 1414(2): claims under section 1412 within two years of the acts alleged, claims under sections 1411 and 1413 within six years.

The city runs on the same two numbers, plus a third that only exists there. DCWP's FAQ gives two years to sue over a missing written contract, six years for nonpayment, underpayment or retaliation, and — separately from either — two years to bring the complaint to DCWP itself (questions 21 and 29 of the FAQ linked above, read on 19 August 2026). Note what that document is: the agency's own guidance, marked last updated in 2018, rather than the text of Chapter 10, which sits behind a challenge page on the city's code library. Any date near the edge is worth confirming with DCWP or against the chapter before you act on it.

Where the paperwork actually goes

Two agencies, two routes, and the state labour department is not one of them.

New York City work. File with DCWP: online through its worker complaint portal, by email to freelancer@dcwp.nyc.gov, or by calling 311. DCWP sends your complaint and supporting documents to the hiring party, who then has 20 days to respond. If they do not respond, DCWP sends you a notice of that failure, and per DCWP's guidance, if the matter reaches court "the court will assume the Hiring Party violated the law unless the Hiring Party can prove they did not." A client's silence is worth more to you than another email from you. DCWP also runs a Navigation Program that helps with finding a lawyer and understanding the court process, and asks you to get back in touch if ten weeks pass with no word (DCWP, Freelance Workers, read on 19 August 2026).

Sequence matters on this route. DCWP's FAQ says a freelance worker may file with the agency or go directly to court — but a worker who files in court first puts the claim outside DCWP's jurisdiction and is asked to send DCWP a copy of the court complaint. The non-response presumption comes out of the agency step, and there is no going back for it once a case is filed.

Elsewhere in the state. Complaints go to the Attorney General through the OAG's complaint forms, not to the Department of Labor. The DOL runs the explanatory page and publishes the model contract, then sends freelance workers to the AG. Getting that backwards costs weeks.

Enforcement is not theoretical. On 24 February 2026 DCWP announced a $528,817 settlement with Splashlight, a New York City creative production company, in restitution and civil penalties for 350 freelancers who worked in the city — full compensation for those never paid, and additional damages for delay for those paid late. The same release puts the running totals since the city law took effect in 2017 at 4,832 complaints received, 4,394 cases closed and $3,526,572 recovered (DCWP press release 021-26, read on 19 August 2026).

What none of this settles

Which of the two laws covers a given job — a Brooklyn client, a freelancer in Philadelphia, work delivered into a Slack channel — is not answered on the face of either statute. DCWP at least names the factors it expects to matter: the city law applies to work performed inside New York City and may apply to work performed outside it depending on the overall circumstances, among them whether some but not all of the work was done in the city, whether you were hired or retained in the city, and whether the hiring party has significant operations there. Its own framing is that "judges will decide how the Law applies in each case." Those factors are what to walk into a lawyer's office holding, not a test you can score yourself.

The second open question is what either law does with a contract signed before it started. The city has a clean answer: DCWP says the city law applies only to contracts entered into on or after 15 May 2017. The state does not, and the reason is visible in the drafting. Chapter 678 of 2023 put the Freelance Isn't Free Act into the Labor Law and provided that it "shall apply only to contracts entered into on or after such effective date." Chapter 98 of 2024 repealed that section before it ever operated, moved the law into General Business Law Article 44-A, and set its own effective date at the 180th day after signing — 28 August 2024 — with no equivalent application clause (A.8535 / S.8039, section 3, read on 19 August 2026). The Department of Labor's page does not address it either. What that silence means for an agreement signed in the summer of 2024 is a question for someone who will put their name to the answer.

Everything up to that point is free. Ask for the written contract before you start, and keep the email that asked. Get the payment date and the list-of-services cut-off into the document. Then, if the money still does not arrive, you are working the collections ladder with a statute behind you instead of another polite reminder.

Statutory text read on 19 August 2026, and read twice: the codified Article 44-A (recorded as last amended 30 August 2024), and against it the enacted bill text published by the State Assembly (A.8535 / S.8039, Chapter 98 of 2024). The two agree word for word across sections 1410 to 1415. Agency material is from the NYS Department of Labor and NYC DCWP, dated where it is quoted. Statutes get amended and agency pages get rewritten; if a citation here no longer says what this page says it says, the contact page reaches me, and the correction goes up carrying the date it was made.