SB 94 is unconstitutionally overbroad and ultimately counterproductive. The legislation’s ban on tipping violates First Amendment rights of both businesses and consumers, and applying lending regulations to earned wage access platforms will harm the low-income workers the bill intends to protect by crippling an innovative financial service that helps them avoid payday loans and bank fees.
NetChoice Veto Request Letter to Gov. Moore on Maryland SB 94, Earned Wage Access Revisions
April 15, 2026
The Honorable Wes Moore
Governor of Maryland
100 State Circle
Annapolis, Maryland 21401-1925
Dear Governor Moore:
On behalf of NetChoice, a trade association working to make the internet safe for free enterprise and free expression, we respectfully urge you to veto Senate Bill 94, which prohibits lenders and earned wage access providers from accepting tips from consumers or even giving consumers the option to tip, among other provisions. While we share the legislature’s goal of protecting Maryland consumers, SB 94 is overbroad, constitutionally infirm, and will ultimately harm the low-income workers it purports to help.
Earned wage access platforms provide essential financial flexibility to workers, allowing them to access wages they have already earned but have not yet been paid. Maryland workers benefit from these innovative services that help them manage financial emergencies, avoid bank overdraft fees and reduce reliance on high-interest credit products. Additionally, these services help workers avoid predatory alternatives like payday loans, which often trap consumers in cycles of debt with APRs that can exceed 400%.
SB 94 would effectively cripple these innovative financial tools. The ban on tips infringes on providers’ free speech rights by prohibiting them from communicating with customers about tips. The prohibition fails even the Central Hudson test for commercial speech because it neither directly advances a substantial government interest nor is narrowly tailored. In fact, Central Hudson actively cuts against SB 94. Central Hudson permits the government to regulate “commercial speech” in order to remedy the problem of false or misleading speech. But the EWA services, nor the tipping mechanism this bill would prohibit, are neither false nor misleading. Instead, SB 94 enacts a roadblock for disfavored services by prohibiting their speech despite no underlying concern with the speech itself. That approach is plainly unconstitutional.
Second, the bill violates consumers’ First Amendment right to express gratitude and satisfaction through voluntary monetary contributions—a form of protected expressive conduct similar to charitable donations and political contributions.
And by broadly sweeping in “tips, gratuities, or other donations” across multiple provisions, the proposal creates an unconstitutionally vague restriction that chills protected speech and leaves businesses uncertain about what forms of voluntary customer payments are prohibited. The availability of less restrictive alternatives—such as disclosure requirements or anti-coercion provisions—demonstrates that this blanket prohibition unnecessarily infringes on constitutional rights when the state’s consumer protection goals could be achieved through narrower means.
The tipping ban cannot survive either strict scrutiny (as applied to expressive conduct) or intermediate scrutiny (as applied to commercial speech) and should be revised to respect the First Amendment rights of both businesses and their customers.
Beyond the tip ban, SB 94 creates additional harms worth noting. It reduces the window for lenders to refund inadvertently received tips from 30 calendar days to 7 days, creating significant operational burdens for smaller fintechs and community lenders without meaningful consumer benefit. It also subjects EWA providers to the consumer loan licensing regime under Title 11, Subtitle 2 of the Financial Institutions Article—even as the bill’s own text acknowledges that EWA is not a loan, a money transmission or an assignment of wages. Applying a lending regulatory framework to a fundamentally different product will increase compliance costs, reduce competition and limit choices for Maryland workers.
NetChoice has a proven track record defending Maryland businesses from government overreach. Just last year, we successfully challenged Maryland’s unconstitutional attempt to silence businesses from discussing the impact of the digital advertising tax. While that case involved direct speech restrictions and this involves commercial regulation, both reflect a concerning pattern of Maryland imposing overly broad restrictions on legitimate business practices rather than pursuing narrower, targeted solutions.
We respectfully urge you to veto SB 94. As always, we offer ourselves as a resource to discuss any of these issues with you in further detail, and we appreciate the opportunity to provide you with our thoughts on this important matter (The views of NetChoice expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of all NetChoice members.).
Sincerely,
Amy Bos
Vice President of Government Affairs
NetChoice
NetChoice is a trade association that works to make the internet safe for free enterprise and free expression.