$140M New York City Taxi Driver Settlement Aims to Resolve Lawsuit Over Allegedly Unfair License Suspensions [UPDATE]

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The New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) has agreed to pay a $140 million settlement that, if approved by the court, will resolve a class action lawsuit that challenged the agency’s policy of suspending drivers’ taxi or for-hire licenses following an arrest and questioned whether its subsequent hearing procedures were constitutional.

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If approved, the proposed class action settlement will cover a class of approximately 19,500 TLC-licensed drivers whose licenses were suspended by the agency based on the driver having been arrested on a criminal charge at any time between June 28, 2003 and February 18, 2020.

If the deal is preliminarily approved by the court, class members who submit a timely, valid claim form and a City of New York Substitute Form W-9 will be eligible to receive a TLC driver settlement payout, the settlement agreement shares.

Eligible drivers can file a claim by mail, fax or email, or online through the court-approved settlement website—TLCSuspensionClaims.com—once it is established.

According to the agreement, cash payments will be allocated to class members based on the total number of days their licenses were suspended and whether they requested an individual damages hearing from the court to determine how much they would be owed.

Those who requested a hearing will receive up to the following per-person amounts corresponding to the number of days their license was suspended:

• 25 days or fewer: $700;
• 26 to 31 total days: $750;
• 32 to 60 total days: $21,000;
• 61 to 90 total days: $24,000;
• 91 to 120 total days: $27,000;
• 121 to 210 total days: $30,000;
• 211 to 390 total days: $33,000;
• 391 days or more: $36,000; and
• no suspension end date: $17,000.

Those who did not request a damages hearing may receive up to 37.5 percent of the amounts distributed in accordance with the above categories.

Per the settlement agreement, class members who were suspended multiple times between June 28, 2003 and February 18, 2020 will receive a cash payout based on the combined length of their suspensions, though suspensions lasting fewer than 32 calendar days will not be counted toward the total number.

Cash payment amounts will depend on the total number of valid claims that are submitted and may be adjusted on a pro rata basis if needed, court documents relay.

The plaintiffs filed an unopposed motion detailing the terms of the New York taxi driver class action settlement on March 14, 2025. The parties now await preliminary court approval of the deal’s terms.

Notice of the taxi driver settlement will be sent to eligible class members by mail, email or text within 14 days following preliminary approval, the agreement states.

The $140 million deal seeks to end almost 19 years of “active and highly contested litigation,” the plaintiffs’ motion says. The initial TLC driver class action lawsuit, filed in June 2006, claimed the agency had an unfair policy of suspending drivers’ licenses following an arrest “without hearings and without even knowing the substance of the allegations supporting the arrest.”

The class action suit also contended that the agency denied suspended drivers their constitutional right to due process by failing to conduct proper hearings to provide drivers an opportunity to contest their license suspension.

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