DoorDash shares fell around 3% on Sept. 23. This followed as the delivery giant faces a record-setting $131.5 million settlement with New York City.
The decline adds to a difficult stretch for DoorDash investors as the stock has fallen nearly 17% over the past month.
Shares are down about 18% year to date and nearly 30% over the past 12 months.
The latest pressure comes after New York City announced a $131.5 million enforcement action against DoorDash over alleged violations of the city’s delivery-worker pay rules.
The settlement is the largest worker settlement in New York City history and the largest involving food-delivery workers in the U.S., according to the city.
“DoorDash messed up,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani wrote in a post on X (the former Twitter). “Every worker will be paid what they are owed, and every company will be forced to abide by the laws of this city.”
According to the terms of the settlement, more than $115 million will be distributed to workers, while more than $16 million will go toward civil penalties and costs.
And more than 260,000 delivery workers are expected to receive compensation.
DoorDash admits payment mistakes
DoorDash acknowledged problems with some worker payments in an unusually direct statement on Sept. 22.
“We screwed up,” the company said, acknowledging that some New York City Dashers were underpaid or received payments late.
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DoorDash said the mistakes were not intentional and blamed many of the problems on technical bugs and complicated deliveries, including orders that crossed city boundaries or involved multiple pickup and drop-off locations.
DoorDash said roughly 264,000 Dashers will receive a payment under the settlement, including about 209,000 affected by missing or late payments.
The company said approximately $6.6 million in payments never reached workers, while another $5.7 million was delivered late.
DoorDash said less than 1% of all payments made to New York City Dashers were affected.
But those payment problems account for only part of the much larger settlement.
More than $83 million relates to a disagreement between DoorDash and the city over how the company calculated compensation for time workers spent logged into the app between deliveries.
DoorDash said it believed its method of calculating that time was legal and practical.
But it has agreed to use the city’s approach rather than fight the dispute for years.
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New York City increases oversight of DoorDash
The city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection said its investigation began after workers complained that DoorDash had failed to pay them or had paid them late.
Regulators subsequently examined DoorDash payment records, analyzing more than 152 million individual payment transactions and 110 million working hours, according to the city.
The investigation also found that DoorDash excluded certain categories of trip and on-call time when determining compensable hours under the city’s minimum-pay rules.
New York City’s minimum pay rate for delivery workers is currently $22.13 per hour before tips.
As part of the settlement, DoorDash must provide detailed monthly data to city regulators for three years.
The company will also make software changes and adopt additional internal controls designed to prevent future payment violations.
Workers will not have to submit claims to receive their money.
The city said affected workers will begin receiving personalized notices in late October, with payments expected to begin this fall.
DoorDash said it has already fixed technical problems tied to the payment errors and had previously set aside the full cost of the settlement in earlier quarters, meaning the agreement itself is not expected to represent a new $131.5 million charge against the company.
This could matter for investors assessing the immediate financial hit.
Still, the agreement draws renewed attention to the regulatory costs facing one of the country’s largest delivery platforms.
The $131.5 million agreement is the latest in a series of enforcement actions targeting how delivery apps compensate their workers.
In 2025, DoorDash agreed to pay $16.75 million to settle a separate investigation by the New York attorney general over its previous tipping practices.
State officials alleged that between 2017 and 2019, the company used customer tips to help fund the guaranteed amount it promised delivery workers, rather than giving workers the full tips on top of that guaranteed pay.
New York City has also pursued DoorDash’s competitors.
In January, the city announced more than $5 million in restitution, penalties, and damages from Uber Eats, Fantuan, and HungryPanda over alleged violations affecting more than 49,000 delivery workers.
Uber also agreed to reinstate workers who had been wrongfully removed from its platform, potentially affecting as many as 10,000 workers.
Those actions come as New York expands regulation of an industry built largely around independent contractors, including higher minimum-pay requirements and new protections governing tips and payment transparency.
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