New York Expands its Workers’ Compensation Law to Extend Workplace-Related PTSD Coverage to All Employees
The most recent amendment to New York’s Workers’ Compensation Law, which went into effect on January 1, 2025, permits any employee to seek workers’ compensation benefits when they experience a “mental injury premised upon extraordinary work-related stress incurred at work. ” The amendment effectively expands an earlier 2017 amendment to the law that provided a subset of first responders (i.e., certain police officers, firefighters, etc.) workers’ compensation benefits eligibility when they endure extraordinary stress from a work-related emergency, such as PTSD (or similar conditions). Now, not only can any employee seek workers’ compensation benefits for mental injury premised upon extraordinary work-related stress, but they can also do so regardless of whether their injury stems from a work-related emergency or not. Typically, an employee is unable to obtain workers’ compensation benefits for mental injuries if the stress...