Workers’ compensation is a form of social insurance that provides wage replacement and medical benefits to workers who are injured on the job or experience an occupation-related disease. Part safety net for workers, part liability insurance for employers, workers’ compensation laws in the US came about on a state-by-state basis in the early 20th century as part of a bargain between business and labor, shielding employers from lawsuits in exchange for creating a benefit program. The law varies state to state, but generally gives injured or sick workers weekly payments in place of wages and the coverage of medical expenses.

New York was the first state in the country to enact a form of workers’ compensation in 1910. A court struck it down the following year. A day after the law was revoked, the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire killed 146 garment workers in Greenwich Village, galvanizing labor activists who pushed the state legislature to change the constitution to allow for a workers’ compensation law. In the years after it was enacted, state courts established a firm, liberal interpretation of the law that favored labor protections, but since the 1990s, administrative reforms have tipped the scales toward employers by adding more and more administrative challenges for workers trying to access their benefits.