On December 19, 2025, Governor Kathy Hochul signed the Fostering Affordability and Integrity through Reasonable (FAIR) Business Practices Act (“the Act”) into law. We previously wrote a blog post about the Act, which was introduced to update and expand New York’s current consumer protection law, Sections 349 and 350 of the New York General Business Law (“GBL”), to encompass a broader range of practices and claims.  The proposed legislation was previously announced by New York Attorney General Letitia James on March 13, 2025, and was passed through the New York State Senate and State Assembly on June 18, 2025.

Between its announcement in March and its passage into law, the Act underwent significant changes.  Among other notable changes:

• The original legislation would have broadened the private right of action in the GBL to cover unfair and abusive practices. While the Act signed into law expands the Attorney General’s enforcement authority to cover unfair and abusive practices, it does not similarly expand the private right of action.  Instead, the Act only allows private individuals to sue only for deceptive acts, which is the same right of action provided under previously existing law.
• The Act signed by the Governor does not include the original proposed amendment authorizing statutory damages of $1,000 plus actual damages.
• The final Act removes the affirmative defense in the original bill for “small entities.”
• The Act as passed does not include the provisions in the original legislation that would have authorized higher civil penalties in some circumstances.

The Act as passed maintains provisions significantly expanding the Attorney General’s enforcement authority. Notably:

• The Act grants the Attorney General the authority to bring actions for unfair and abusive practices, in addition to deceptive practices. An act or practice is considered unfair “when it causes or is likely to cause substantial injury which is not reasonably avoidable and is not outweighed by countervailing benefits to consumers or to competition.” An act or practice is abusive when it “materially interferes with the ability of a person to understand a term or condition of a product or service” or it otherwise takes advantage of a person’s lack of understanding, inability to protect their own interests, or their reasonable reliance in selecting or using a product or service.
• The Act eliminates the requirement under the prior law that an act or practice be “consumer-oriented” or only have an impact on the public at large to be actionable by the Attorney General.
• In a press release issued upon the passage of the FAIR Act, the Attorney General signaled that the “unfair and abusive business acts” covered by the act include certain practices employed by student loan services, car dealers, nursing homes, debt collectors, health insurance companies, and companies that “take advantage of consumers with limited English proficiency and obscure pricing information and fees.”

In sum, the final version of the Act rolls back many of the changes to the private right of action proposed in the original legislation.  Indeed, the final bill states that “[n]o change is intended to be made to the private right of action, which remains limited to consumer-oriented deceptive acts and practices.”  Nor does the Act “disturb existing caselaw requiring a private plaintiff alleging a deceptive act or practice show that the ‘act or practice that caused actual, although not necessarily pecuniary, harm.’”  On the other hand, the Act expands the Attorney General’s enforcement authority to cover unfair and abusive practices and extends its reach beyond acts that are “consumer-oriented.”