diff --git a/api/envoy/api/v2/route/route.proto b/api/envoy/api/v2/route/route.proto
index 2d2b56ae67d80..f0bda5fd8ace6 100644
--- a/api/envoy/api/v2/route/route.proto
+++ b/api/envoy/api/v2/route/route.proto
@@ -574,8 +574,7 @@ message RouteAction {
   // fires, the stream is terminated with a 408 Request Timeout error code if no
   // upstream response header has been received, otherwise a stream reset
   // occurs.
-  google.protobuf.Duration idle_timeout = 24
-      [(validate.rules).duration.gt = {}, (gogoproto.stdduration) = true];
+  google.protobuf.Duration idle_timeout = 24 [(gogoproto.stdduration) = true];
 
   // Indicates that the route has a retry policy. Note that if this is set,
   // it'll take precedence over the virtual host level retry policy entirely
diff --git a/test/common/router/config_impl_test.cc b/test/common/router/config_impl_test.cc
index f17562c6e3e2b..dc2eaf2f178e6 100644
--- a/test/common/router/config_impl_test.cc
+++ b/test/common/router/config_impl_test.cc
@@ -5036,8 +5036,10 @@ name: ZeroIdleTimeout
           idle_timeout: 0s
   )EOF";
 
-  EXPECT_THROW_WITH_REGEX(parseRouteConfigurationFromV2Yaml(ZeroIdleTimeout), EnvoyException,
-                          "value must be greater than \" \"0s");
+  TestConfigImpl config(parseRouteConfigurationFromV2Yaml(ZeroIdleTimeout), factory_context_, true);
+  Http::TestHeaderMapImpl headers = genRedirectHeaders("idle.lyft.com", "/regex", true, false);
+  const RouteEntry* route_entry = config.route(headers, 0)->routeEntry();
+  EXPECT_EQ(0, route_entry->idleTimeout().value().count());
 }
 
 TEST_F(RouteConfigurationV2, ExplicitIdleTimeout) {