Instacart Sues NYC Over Grocery Delivery Pay, Tipping Laws (1)

Instacart is suing New York City over a package of laws that set minimum wage, tipping, and other pay standards for grocery delivery services.

The New York City Council “trained their crosshairs on Instacart” and passed the laws in an effort to bring the company under the same regulatory regime as restaurant-delivery services, the company said in a complaint filed Tuesday in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.

The city has failed “to stay within the well-established bounds of its authority, under multiple bodies of substantive law,” the complaint says. The requirements, which are set to take effect in January, are preempted by federal and state laws and violate the dormant commerce clause.

Instacart wants the court to declare the laws invalid and, in the interim, preliminarily enjoin enforcement of the requirements.

Five Laws

The five laws at issue “are the outgrowth” of other city laws that set pay standards for restaurant-delivery services. Food-delivery giants challenged those requirements in court but ultimately settled with the city; after that, the city applied the minimum pay standard from that industry to grocery shoppers on Instacart’s platform.

The laws specifically require grocery-delivery services to ensure worker pay matches or exceeds the pay offered by restaurant delivery services and provide consumers a 10% tip option or a blank space to enter a custom tip amount. They also regulate the disclosure and timing of platforms’ payments to their workers and impose recordkeeping and reporting requirements.

The minimum pay requirement “is divorced from the realities of grocery delivery generally and Instacart’s platform more specifically,” the company said.

Minimum pay and tipping standards and recordkeeping requirements are statewide issues subject to state rule, the complaint says. The local laws “represent the City’s effort to legislate where the Legislature has already spoken and to replace the State’s judgment with its own,” the company said.

“Delivery workers play a major role in our city’s economy and they deserve to be protected from exploitation. The Council expects that these laws will be upheld in court,” a city council spokesperson said.

Instacart shoppers are currently paid $13 per hour with no benefits, no pay for waiting time, and no reimbursement for vehicle expenses, said a spokesperson for the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection. “These workers deserve better. We will continue to fight to protect and improve their rights, close loopholes that undercut their wages, and ensure every grocery delivery worker receives the fair pay and protections they are owed,” the spokesperson added.

Littler Mendelson PC and Sidley Austin LLP represent Instacart.

The case is Maplebear Inc. v. City of New York, S.D.N.Y., No. 1:25-cv-09979, complaint filed 12/2/25.