New York City is suing the firm behind unlicensed rideshare app Empower after years of the company being accused of flouting city rules.
The controversial app — which charges drivers a subscription fee to connect them with potential passengers — has been operating in New York City for years despite seeking no license from the Taxi and Limousine commission, which regulates taxi, livery and ride-share businesses within the five boroughs.
City law requires all for-hire vehicle companies to be licensed with the TLC. Drivers who carry paying passengers must also be licensed separately from the company that dispatches them.
According to the suit, which was filed late Friday in Manhattan Supreme Court, Empower has not obtained a license as a vehicle base — nor has it sought the be licensed as a “high volume” operation, despite publicly saying it has served enough passengers to cross the city’s high-volume threshold.
“Empower has defied all attempts by TLC to have Empower come into compliance with local law and regulation,” assistant corporation council for New York City Jordan Schneider wrote.
Empower’s history of alleged rule flouting goes back to 2022. In May of that year, the TLC sent the firm a letter demanding it “cease and desist” operating in the five boroughs without a license.
When the company continued, the suit says, undercover officers with the TLC booked trips with the app and issued 32 tickets in 2022 and 2023. Empower never acknowledged, disputed, or paid the required fines for the violations, city lawyers wrote. The company similarly ignored 19 summonses in February of this year.
Despite allegedly ignoring the city’s attempts to enforce TLC rules, Empower’s CEO Joshua Sear appeared virtually before the City Council last month during a hearing to confirm Midori Valdivia as the TLC’s newly-minted head.
In that appearance, Sear said the firm had completed more than 100,000 trips inside New York City during a recent week — a stat that would put Empower past the TLC’s threshold for “high volume” for-hire vehicle operation and subject the company to additional regulations and requirements akin to those faced by companies like Lyft and Uber.
In a memo filed to the court, Schneider called Sear’s appearance “an astonishing display of defiance” in which he “unprompted, announced that Empower was conducting more than 100,000 illegal rides per week in the City.”
Roshn Marwah, Empower’s chief of staff, told the Daily News on Monday that the firm had plans to meet with TLC officials this week.
“Every driver using Empower’s software to work for themselves in New York is a TLC licensed driver using a TLC licensed vehicle,” Marwah said in a statement. “We look forward to working with the Mamdani Administration to ensure TLC licensed drivers have the same civil rights as all other licensed professionals in New York and that New Yorkers have access to affordable and safe transportation.”
While Marwah said the firm was trying to “facilitate the assessment and payment of any taxes or fees owed by drivers who choose to work for themselves,” he did not comment on the regulations or fees due to the TLC by a vehicle base or “high volume” ride-share firm.
Empower was barred from doing business in Washington DC last year after the company was found to have flouted licensing requirements and ignored fines in the nation’s capital. In response, Sear — who maintains his platform simply allows drivers to run their own individual for-hire-driver business — stopped charging drivers to access the platform in DC. He is appealing the DC judge’s ruling.
Empower also made headlines in Gotham earlier this month, when outgoing TLC chairman David Do took a job with the company. Do reversed course days later, backing out of the job amid criticism.