Covington Lawyers Note Heavy State Activity Against Surveillance Pricing
A growing number of states are proposing regulations on “surveillance pricing” and will continue doing so, Covington privacy attorneys blogged Monday.
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“This year, state lawmakers have introduced over a dozen bills to regulate ‘surveillance,’ ‘personalized,’ or ‘dynamic’ pricing,” noted the lawyers, Lindsey Tonsager, Nicholas Shepherd and August Gweon. “Although many of these proposals have failed as 2025 state legislative sessions come to a close, lawmakers in New York, California, and a handful of other states are moving forward with a range of different approaches,” including “disclosure requirements, data use limitations, general prohibitions, and specific restrictions in the food retail and food service sectors.”
For example, in May, New York signed into law a bill that makes it a violation of the state’s unfair, deceptive or abusive practices law “to knowingly offer ‘personalized algorithmic pricing using consumer data specific to a particular individual’ unless the personalized algorithmic price contains a disclosure stating: ‘This price was set by an algorithm using your personal data,’” the Covington attorneys said, noting that Ohio lawmakers are similarly considering disclosure requirements (SB-79/SB-328).
In addition, the California Assembly passed a bill (AB-446) that would generally prohibit surveillance pricing (see 2505210043 and 2505130007). A California Senate-passed bill (SB-259) seeks to stop the practice through data-use limitations, the lawyers said.
They also cited proposed general bans on surveillance pricing in Colorado, Georgia, Illinois and Minnesota. “Although these proposals failed to pass by the close of their states’ legislative sessions, we expect similar legislation to be introduced in future sessions.”