New York employers must give current and former employees a free copy of their personnel record within five business days of a written request, starting 8 November. The law adds section 210-b to the state Labor Law. The New York State Senate’s page for bill S3460 shows the governor signed it as chapter 293 on 9 September 2026, and the act takes effect on the sixtieth day after it became law.
What section 210-b requires
The bill text defines a personnel record as a record kept by an employer that identifies an employee, to the extent the record is used, has been used, or may affect that employee’s qualifications for employment, promotion, transfer, additional compensation or disciplinary action. The definition reaches records held by anyone with a contractual agreement to keep or supply a personnel record for the employer. For an HR team, that sweeps in whatever sits inside an applicant tracking system, a performance module or a screening vendor’s database.
The text lists what the record includes when the employer prepared it: name, address, date of birth, job title and description, rate of pay and other compensation, starting date, the job application, resumes submitted in response to the employer’s advertisement, performance evaluations, written warnings of substandard performance, lists of probationary periods, waivers the employee signed, dated termination notices and other documents relating to disciplinary action. Information of a personal nature about another person is excluded when disclosing it would be a clearly unwarranted invasion of that person’s privacy.
“Employer” covers any individual, corporation, partnership, labor organization, unincorporated association or other legal business, including governmental entities and agents of an employer. The text sets no headcount threshold. “Employee” includes a person formerly employed.
The clocks HR has to run
Four timers come out of the text:
- An employer that receives a written request for a copy of the record has five business days to provide it at no cost to the employee.
- An employer must notify the employee within ten days of placing in the record any information that is, has been or may be used to negatively affect the employee’s qualification for employment, promotion, transfer or additional compensation, or the possibility of discipline.
- An employer does not have to allow review on more than two separate occasions in a calendar year, and the review prompted by a negative entry does not count toward those two.
- The complete record must be kept, without deletions or expungement, from the date of employment to three years after employment ends.
Disputes, enforcement and retaliation
If an employee disagrees with something in the record, the two sides can agree on removal or correction. Without agreement, the employee may submit a written statement that becomes part of the record and goes with the disputed information whenever it is sent to a third party, as long as the original stays in the file. Where an employer placed information it knew or should have known to be false, the employee has a remedy through a collective bargaining agreement, other personnel procedures or the courts to have it expunged.
Violations carry a fine of $500 to $2,500, and the Attorney General enforces the section. An employer may not discharge, threaten, penalize or retaliate against an employee who uses these rights. The text names threatening to contact immigration authorities, or reporting suspected citizenship or immigration status of the employee or a household member, as forms of retaliation. A collective bargaining agreement controls only if it gives employees at least substantially similar access.
What the sponsor said it is for
State Senator Andrew Gounardes, who sponsored the bill, wrote in his sponsor memo that the legislature must keep personnel records for their original purpose, which he described as “a tool to track and improve employee performance and not a weapon to discredit current or former employees in the court of public opinion.” The memo says the bill is modeled on Massachusetts’ personnel record law and adds that a state right of action would deter retaliatory use of records against employees who later come into conflict with their employers.
What it means for the HR leader
The law lands on the people who keep the files, so the first job is a map of where every personnel record lives. The definition follows how a record is used, wherever it is stored, and it extends to vendors holding records under contract. A request that arrives at a manager or a payroll mailbox still starts the five-business-day clock, so intake needs one named owner and a log with the date received.
The ten-day notice is the part most likely to be missed. In our reading, any written warning, probation note or disciplinary document that a manager saves to the file can trigger it, and many of those documents are created outside HR. The practical fix is a rule that nothing goes into a record without passing through a system or inbox that stamps the date and sends the notice.
The text describes a record “maintained in typewritten or printed form” or handwritten in indelible ink and does not address digital systems, so counsel should confirm how an export from an HRIS satisfies the copy requirement. Retention settings deserve a second look as well: the three-year period after termination runs against any deletion schedule that purges performance notes sooner.
Two earlier pieces on this site cover neighboring ground. An opinion column argued that UK HR records are now the employer’s defense file, and the Labor Department’s recent final rule on apprenticeship sponsors, covered in DOL final rule removes affirmative action duties for apprenticeship sponsors, shows how recordkeeping duties can shift from one level of government to another.
Before the first request arrives, HR can take five steps this week:
- List every system and vendor that holds records matching the definition.
- Name the owner of written requests and start a dated log.
- Build the ten-day notice into the workflow for warnings and disciplinary entries.
- Set retention to employment plus three years for the covered documents.
- Brief managers that using these rights is protected, including against immigration-related threats.
Source: New York State Senate, Bill S3460 (2025-2026 session)
