New York has tried three times since 2022 to pass the Fashion Sustainability and Social Accountability Act, known simply as the Fashion Act, and every version has stalled in committee. That track record makes the bill sound weak. It has actually outlasted nearly every comparable law proposed in other states, and a new version introduced this spring suggests its backers are not done yet.
What the Fashion Act Would Actually Require
The Fashion Act would require large apparel, footwear and fashion bag sellers doing business in New York to map their supply chains and run ongoing due diligence on the human rights and environmental impacts hiding inside them. The bill’s own text requires covered companies to identify, prevent, mitigate, account for and remediate adverse impacts in their own operations and in their suppliers’ operations, set science based targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions, and work with suppliers to improve chemical management. Companies would also have to publish this data publicly online and adopt responsible purchasing practices that do not push suppliers toward the labor violations that unrealistic deadlines tend to produce.
One provision goes further than disclosure. The bill would hold fashion sellers jointly and severally liable for wage theft committed by their tier one suppliers, meaning a company cannot simply blame its manufacturer when workers go unpaid.
Who Actually Has to Comply With the Fashion Act
The threshold is global annual revenue of at least $100 million, combined with doing business in New York State. That combination catches nearly every major apparel, footwear and fashion bag brand sold in the US, whether the company is headquartered in New York or not, and whether the garment carries the company’s own name or someone else’s. The bill explicitly reaches private label goods too, closing the obvious workaround of manufacturing under a store brand instead of a designer label.
The Fashion Act’s Enforcement Has Real Teeth
Unlike a lot of disclosure legislation, the Fashion Act does not rely on public shame alone. The bill assigns enforcement to the New York Attorney General, and violators face fines of up to 2% of their annual revenue. For a company posting several billion dollars in global sales, that ceiling turns noncompliance into a genuine financial risk rather than a line item. Penalty money does not disappear into the state’s general fund either. The bill creates a Fashion Remediation Fund that channels fine revenue directly into environmental and labor remediation projects in the communities most affected by the violations.
Why the Fashion Act Keeps Stalling
Senator Alessandra Biaggi and Assemblymember Anna Kelles first introduced the bill in January 2022, backed by the Act on Fashion Coalition and designer Stella McCartney. It never made it out of committee that session. Kelles reintroduced it in the Assembly in 2023, paired with a Senate version from Brad Hoylman-Sigal after Biaggi left the Senate, and that version stalled too. The current 2025-2026 session carries two more versions, A4631 and S4558, both still sitting in committee.
New York is not alone in trying this. California, Massachusetts and Washington all introduced similar fashion accountability bills in 2025, and by early 2026 the picture diverged sharply. California’s AB 405 missed its committee deadline on January 31, 2026, and died under the state’s own constitutional rules. Washington’s HB 1107 missed its floor deadline on February 17, 2026, and died the same way. New York’s bill did neither. Albany’s legislative session runs on a two year cycle rather than resetting annually, so the Fashion Act simply carries over into 2026 rather than expiring, which is the reason it has survived this long while its peers in other states have not.
What Happened to the Fashion Act This Spring
On April 2, 2026, Senator Kavanagh introduced a companion bill, S9740, which folds the same due diligence and remediation fund framework into something called the Interstate Fashion Environment Accountability Act. The name signals an attempt to coordinate with whatever survives in other states rather than have New York regulate the industry alone, an approach that could matter given how quickly California and Washington’s versions collapsed. As of this writing, S9740 sits in committee alongside its sister bills, with no floor vote scheduled.
Why the Fashion Act Still Matters to a Brand That Isn’t in New York
A bill that has failed three times can look like background noise, but the $100 million revenue threshold and the “doing business in New York” trigger mean this law was never really about New York retailers specifically. Any national apparel brand selling into the state falls inside its reach the moment it passes, and the enforcement structure, a 2% revenue fine plus joint liability for supplier wage theft, sets a template other states have already started copying. Whether or not this exact bill becomes law, brands with real exposure to fast fashion supply chains would be wise to read it as a preview rather than a curiosity.
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