The Surveillance Pricing Bills That Pass Won't Be the Ones That Work

American consumer protection has a recurring shape. Narrow bills pass because they protect almost nothing. Broad bills stall because they would protect too much. The bill that survives is the one industry can live with, and the practice it permits is the one consumers were never going to be shielded from.

California's AB 2564 would have been the broadest state attempt, threading surveillance pricing into the California Consumer Privacy Act and reaching retailers far beyond the grocery aisle. It cleared both chambers and died at the Aug. 31 midnight Assembly concurrence deadline on a Senate amendment. Maryland became the first state to ban the practice in April; activists who pushed the bill now call it toothless, because it was scoped to grocery stores. At least a dozen states have weighed similar bills this year. The next one to pass will tell the same story as Maryland if its scope is narrow enough to clear the industry veto, and the next one to fail will tell the same story as California if it tries to reach further.

Samantha Gordon, TechEquity's chief advocacy officer, called retail, groceries, basic household needs, and clothes "particularly harmful" territory for the practice. The California Retailers Association countered that AB 2564 was "overly broad" and would imperil "individualized discounts" and rewards programs. Both warnings are accurate. Surveillance pricing's legislative future will be measured in what the next bill does not cover, not in whether it passes.