New York Is About to Put Martial Arts Schools Under Background-Check Law
New York’s Senate and Assembly both passed a bill in May 2026 that would require sex-offender registry checks for adults working with minors at martial arts schools, dance studios, gymnastics clubs, music schools and tutoring centres. It has not been signed. School owners in the other forty-nine states should read the 32-hour threshold anyway, because that number is the part other legislatures will copy.
Where this bill actually stands, as of 12 September 2026. S5257C passed the Senate 60–0 on 28 May 2026 and A6568B passed the Assembly on 29 May. The last recorded action is “returned to senate.” It has not been delivered to the Governor, there is no chapter number, and it is not law. Anyone telling you it is in force is wrong. When it is signed it takes effect 180 days later.
What the bill does
The bill closes a gap that most parents assume does not exist. Public and private schools and licensed daycare centres in New York already operate under background-check requirements. Private businesses that instruct children — martial arts academies among them — largely do not.
Under S5257C / A6568B, sponsored by Senator Michelle Hinchey with Assembly Members Didi Barrett and Anil Beephan Jr., businesses providing instructional, recreational or extracurricular services to minors would have to check employees, contractors and regular volunteers against sex-offender registries.
| Provision | What it requires |
|---|---|
| Who is covered | Employees, contractors and regular volunteers at businesses instructing minors — martial arts academies, dance and gymnastics studios, music and performing-arts schools, art schools, sports training facilities, tutoring centres. Public and private schools and daycare centres are exempt because they are covered elsewhere. |
| The threshold | A “regular volunteer” is one serving more than sixteen hours in a month or thirty-two hours in a year. Note the monthly prong — coverage of it has tended to quote only the annual figure. |
| Which registries | The New York State sex offender registry, the registry of any state the person has lived in during the previous five years, and the U.S. Department of Justice National Sex Offender Public Website. |
| How often | Renewed every five years. |
| The bar | Registered sex offenders would be barred from owning or working in a covered business. |
| Penalty | Civil penalties up to $10,000 per violation. |
| Effective date | 180 days after it becomes law. |
The case behind it
This magazine reports convictions, not allegations, and this one is a conviction.
Tyler Leclerc, an instructor at Leclerc’s Martial Arts in Dutchess County, was arrested on 5 February 2025 and charged in a 42-count indictment. He pleaded guilty on 12 June 2025 to two counts of criminal sexual act in the third degree, one count of attempted sexual abuse in the first degree and two counts of forcible touching. On 3 September 2025, Dutchess County Court sentenced him to ten years in state prison followed by ten years of post-release supervision, with sex-offender registration. The school has closed.
The detail that turned a criminal case into a legislative one is separate and also a matter of record: the school was owned by his father, Robert Leclerc, who was convicted of third-degree rape in 1998. A conviction of that kind would have disqualified him from working at a school or a daycare centre. It did not disqualify him from owning a martial arts academy, because no law said it should.
That is the loophole. It is not an abstract one.
What a school owner should do now, in any state
None of the following waits on Albany, and none of it is expensive relative to what it protects.
Run registry checks on every adult with regular access to minors — including independent contractors, visiting instructors, and the parent volunteers who help with the kids’ class every week. The New York threshold is a useful default even outside New York: more than sixteen hours a month or thirty-two hours a year means regular, and regular means checked.
Put the policy in writing. Who is checked, how often, who reviews the result, and which convictions disqualify. A policy you cannot produce on request is a policy a plaintiff’s lawyer will say you did not have.
Design out one-adult-alone access. Private lessons in view of a window or camera, two adults for changing areas, no unsupervised transport. This is the cheapest control on the list and the one most schools skip because it feels like distrust of good people. It is not. It protects the good people too.
Write complaints down. An undocumented concern that someone mentioned months earlier is the single most damaging fact that can emerge afterwards — worse, in practice, than the absence of a policy.
Check your own history against the coming standard. If a registered offender would be barred from owning a covered business in New York, that provision will travel. Owners with anyone in an ownership or instructional role who would not clear a check should be dealing with it now, on their own terms.
Why this is the template
Legislatures copy each other, and they copy definitions more readily than they copy policy. The two pieces of this bill most likely to reappear elsewhere are the 32-hour threshold and the category definition — “a business providing instructional, recreational or extracurricular services to minors.” That phrase captures martial arts schools cleanly, and it does so without anyone having to argue about whether a dojo is a gym, a school or a retail business.
Parents already assume you do this. The only question is whether you are doing it before a statute makes you.
Frequently asked questions
Has New York’s martial arts background-check bill become law?
No. As of 12 September 2026 it has passed both chambers — the Senate 60-0 on 28 May 2026 and the Assembly on 29 May — but has not been delivered to the Governor or signed. There is no chapter number. If signed, it takes effect 180 days later.
Which businesses would the New York bill cover?
Businesses providing instructional, recreational or extracurricular services to minors: martial arts academies, dance and gymnastics studios, music and performing-arts schools, art schools, sports training facilities and tutoring centres. Public and private schools and daycare centres are exempt because existing law already covers them.
What is the 32-hour threshold?
The bill defines a regular volunteer as someone serving more than sixteen hours in a month or thirty-two hours in a year. Anyone over that threshold would require a registry check. Coverage has tended to quote only the annual figure, but the monthly prong is in the text and catches seasonal helpers.
Which registries would have to be checked?
The New York State sex offender registry, the registry of any state the person has lived in over the previous five years, and the U.S. Department of Justice National Sex Offender Public Website. Checks would be renewed every five years.
What should a school owner outside New York do?
Adopt the standard voluntarily. Run registry checks on every adult with regular access to minors including contractors and volunteers, put the policy in writing, design out situations where one adult is alone with a child, and document every complaint. None of that requires a statute and all of it is cheaper than the alternative.
Related reading
- Legislation & Regulation — our reporting on the law as it affects schools
- Editorial policy
Sources, and what we could not confirm
Primary sources: the New York State Senate and Assembly bill records for S5257 / S5257C and A6568 / A6568B, including the text defining the sixteen-hour and thirty-two-hour thresholds, the registries to be checked, the five-year renewal, the ownership bar, the $10,000 civil penalty and the 180-day effective-date provision; the sponsors’ own joint press release; and Dutchess County District Attorney announcements and contemporaneous local reporting for the Leclerc indictment, plea and sentence.
On the bill’s status: we have deliberately not written that the bill is law. Reporting in June 2026 described it as heading to the Governor’s desk, and the Governor’s office said it would be reviewed. The legislative record shows no delivery and no signature as of publication. We will report the chapter law and the effective date when they exist.
What we left out and why: two other 2026 cases involving martial arts instructors circulated alongside this story — an arrest in Florida and a pending trial in New Hampshire. Neither has produced a conviction, and this journal reports convictions and final judgments rather than allegations. We will report those matters if and when a court does.
This is reporting, not legal advice. Have counsel in your own state review your background-check policy, your contracts with instructors and your insurance before relying on anything above.
Corrections. See our editorial policy.
