December 23, 2025
The majority of American workers are employed “at will”—meaning they can be fired at any time, for virtually any reason, creating financial instability in their lives. To protect the more than 75,000 workers in its chain fast-food industry, New York City in 2021 passed a “just cause” law, designed to prevent these restaurant workers from being unfairly let go.
The law stipulates that, once an employee has passed a 30-day probationary period, their employer can fire that worker for only four reasons: 1) illegal behavior, 2) dangerous behavior, 3) failure to perform job duties, or 4) a general downturn in business conditions. Moreover, if the firing is related to the third reason—job performance—the employer has to offer the worker a chance at retraining and have given multiple warnings before termination can occur.
Proponents of the law hold that it will prevent racial and gender-based discrimination in firings. Opponents counter that it could unduly restrict employer freedoms in hiring and thus increase costs and reduce employment.
The results from a theoretical model
Researchers Aaron Sojourner of the Upjohn Institute and Joseph Pickens of the U.S. Naval Academy wanted to learn whether the law indeed effectively protected workers from discrimination. They constructed a theoretical model based on worker productivity and manager taste-based discrimination; it predicted that the new law would result in more new employees being let go in their first 30 days, while still on probationary status. However, once an employee made it through the probationary period, the model found it was harder than before the law’s enactment to fire that worker and easier for the worker to remain in the job—especially if the worker was in a category that encounters systematic discrimination in the workplace, such as female, Black, or Hispanic..
The two findings of the model, pre- and post-probation, tended to cancel each other out, rendering the overall theoretical impact of the law ambiguous and needing further study to yield additional empirical evidence.
The next step: Comparing data
Sojourner and Pickens then compared employment data for New York City’s fast-food workers covered under the law to workers not covered—both workers in other jobs in the city and fast-food workers from other counties around the country.
The results came back mixed. Evidence was lacking that the just-cause law led to more employees being let go during the 30-day probationary period. However, neither did the law increase the likelihood that women, Blacks and Hispanics would have more stable employment in the long term. And it made it more likely that younger workers, aged 14–34, would not make it through the probationary period—perhaps because they tend to lack as substantial a resume as needed for employers to feel they could rely on in predicting future work quality.
An avenue for future research
Thus, overall, Sojourner and Pickens’ findings indicate the city’s just-cause law did not have a large effect on stabilizing employment. However, they point out that a different design and implementation of such a law might produce a different result. Among the many variables at play, they speculate that the data may have failed to catch discriminatory actions or that enforcement of the law was weak.
Additionally, the data were only quarterly, a mismatch with the 30-day probationary period. And the law took effect during the COVID-19 pandemic, which scrambled the restaurant industry. These factors render hard-and-fast conclusions about just-cause laws from this study elusive, but Sojourner and Pickens’ findings do provide a framework for future research on such laws.
Sojourner and Pickens had previously collaborated on a different study, based on New York’s 2017 Fair Workweek Law, passed to give the city’s fast-food workers a measure of predictability in their work schedules and keep employers from switching up their schedules on short notice. The researchers found the law established predictability without costing jobs. Following on its heels, the just-cause law seeks to establish additional protections for the city’s fast-food workers. More research could determine to what degree it has accomplished that goal.
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