A New York City COVID-19-era law that required food delivery companies to share customer data with restaurants is unconstitutional, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.
US District Judge Analisa Torres said the law violated the First Amendment by improperly regulating commercial speech. The judge’s ruling was a legal victory for Uber Eats, Grubhub, and Doordash — the three big food delivery companies that filed the lawsuit.
Under the law, the delivery companies were forced to provide restaurants with customers’ names, delivery addresses, contact information, and order contents. The law was not enforced while the litigation was ongoing, the city said.
The three companies argued that the law was exploitative, threatening their customers’ privacy and data security.
Their primary point revolved around their own business, claiming that it harmed them because restaurants could use the data for marketing and to “poach customers away.”
The law was strongly supported by the New York City Hospitality Alliance, a non-profit that represents restaurant and nightlife establishments. Andrew Rigie, the executive director of the group, said that Torres’ decision “hurts small businesses and consumers” and strongly advocated for an appeal.
Torres determined that the city never demonstrated a substantial interest in helping restaurants collect the data from the delivery companies, and noted that there were less intrusive ways to help, like giving customers the option to share their data or offering financial incentives for the delivery companies to share their data.
Doordash celebrated the ruling, stating that it “rightly recognized how this law would have violated bedrock First Amendment rights of how we protect New Yorkers’ data.”
The law was adopted during the summer in 2021 as one of various measures to help restaurants recover from the damage done during the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown.
The city’s Law Department is currently reviewing the ruling, spokesman Nicholas Paolucci said.
With Post Wires
