"I've worked all my life, I've paid into Accident Compensation, and at the end of the day that's my insurance," one claimant told ONE News.
"We've got to the situation now where ACC are claiming we're not deaf."
Each claimant has already been involved in mediation talks that broke down.
The case will ultimately be heard by the judicial authority, the Human Rights Review Tribunal, and the claimants hope publicly-funded specialist lawyers will pick up their case.
"It's bad enough that these people are hearing impaired and have limited communication abilities, but their basic rights are also being abused by ACC," Louise Carroll from the Foundation for the Deaf said.
Figures obtained by ONE News show the number of occupational hearing loss claims accepted each year by ACC has fallen by more than 5000 since the law change kicked in.
"Some people have to prove at least 18% of hearing loss, which is really significant when it falls in the human voice range," Carroll said.
"It means that people with noise induced hearing loss, where the environment is noisy, they're going to be quite markedly disadvantaged."
ACC declined an interview with ONE News, saying they were not yet involved.
