Rhode Island's Senate Commerce Committee passed a substitute version of bill S2342 without debate, advancing a mandate that would require grocery stores to operate one manned checkout lane for every three self-checkout stations. The measure now heads to the full Senate for a vote, as The U.S. Sun reported, and could reshape how chains like Aldi, Whole Foods, and Stop & Shop run their Rhode Island locations.
If the bill becomes law, a grocery store with six self-checkout lanes would need at least two workers running traditional registers. A store with nine self-checkout kiosks would need three staffed lines. Every affected store would also have to designate at least one self-checkout lane that complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The bill's proponents say the ratio protects jobs and hours for grocery workers. But the legislation singles out one type of retailer, grocers, while leaving big-box stores, hardware chains, pharmacies, dollar stores, and fast-food restaurants free to automate as they see fit. That carve-out has drawn sharp criticism from the industry group that represents Rhode Island's food sellers.
Under S2342's substitute language, a business falls under the mandate only if "the majority of its gross income from the retail sale of groceries." The bill defines groceries broadly: raw or processed food or drink, prescription and over-the-counter drugs, and hygiene items when a store also sells food, drink, and "miscellaneous household items" such as laundry detergent and dishwasher soap.
That definition captures grocery chains like Aldi, Whole Foods, and Stop & Shop. It also reaches pharmacies such as CVS and Walgreens, which sell food alongside prescriptions.
But retailers whose revenue comes primarily from non-grocery merchandise, Walmart, Target, Lowe's, Home Depot, Five Below, would likely fall outside the law's scope. Fast-food chains like Taco Bell and McDonald's, which have moved aggressively toward self-service kiosks, are excluded entirely.
The result is a regulation that lands squarely on traditional grocers while leaving their competitors untouched. For a discount chain like Aldi, which operates more than 2,600 U.S. stores and has built its model around lean staffing and low overhead, a mandated checkout ratio could mean higher labor costs passed along to shoppers.
Scott Bromberg, president of the Rhode Island Food Dealers Association, wrote testimony against an earlier iteration of the bill. His objection centered on the law's selective targeting.
"This proposal is especially egregious because it specifically targets only grocery stores."
Bromberg pointed to the wide range of businesses that rely on self-checkout to manage labor efficiently, arguing that grocery stores are being punished for a practice their competitors use freely.
"Big box retailers, along with hardware stores, pharmacies, dollar stores, fast food chains and more utilize self-checkout to allow them to deploy their staff where needed most."
His argument is straightforward: if self-checkout is a problem worth regulating, it should apply across the board. Carving out grocers alone distorts competition and raises costs in one of the sectors where consumers are most price-sensitive.
The grocery industry is already under pressure from multiple directions. Several major chains have announced plans to close more than 120 U.S. stores in 2026, reflecting thin margins and shifting consumer habits. Layering new staffing mandates on top of those headwinds does not make the math easier.
S2342 doesn't just require more bodies behind registers. The substitute version specifies that the employee overseeing self-checkout lanes "shall be relieved of all other duties." That means a store can't assign a cashier to also stock shelves, answer questions, or manage returns while monitoring the kiosks.
For small-footprint grocers that run tight crews, that provision could force difficult choices. Hire additional staff to cover the dedicated self-checkout monitor role, or reduce the number of self-checkout lanes to stay within the ratio, either way, operating costs rise.
The ADA compliance requirement adds another layer. At least one self-checkout lane at each grocery store must meet accessibility standards. That's a reasonable goal on its own, but bundled into a bill that already constrains how stores deploy technology, it becomes one more cost center in a mandate-heavy package.
Rhode Island is not the first state to consider restrictions on self-checkout. New Jersey has pursued its own legislation targeting grocery-store technology, including a bill that would restrict digital shelf labels. The pattern is consistent: state legislatures intervening in routine business operations under the banner of consumer or worker protection, with costs that ultimately land on shoppers.
The House version of the self-checkout bill was held for further study back in February, suggesting the proposal faced resistance on that side of the statehouse. The Senate Commerce Committee's decision to advance a substitute version, described as "watered-down", without any debate indicates the committee wanted to move the bill forward quickly, possibly to avoid the kind of opposition testimony Bromberg and others had already lodged.
The full Senate vote is scheduled for this week. If it passes, the bill would still need to clear the House, where the earlier version stalled. Whether the substitute language is enough to overcome that resistance remains an open question.
What is not in question is the direction. Rhode Island lawmakers want to tell grocery stores how many employees they must put behind cash registers, a decision those businesses have made for themselves for decades based on customer volume, store layout, and labor availability.
The grocery sector faces enough challenges without legislators micromanaging checkout lanes. Food safety scares, rising supply-chain costs, and razor-thin margins already squeeze operators from every angle. Adding a state-imposed staffing formula to the mix doesn't protect workers, it raises prices for the families who can least afford it.
The most telling feature of S2342 is what it leaves alone. Walmart and Target, two of the largest self-checkout operators in the country, would almost certainly escape the mandate because groceries aren't the majority of their revenue. Home Depot and Lowe's, which have replaced entire banks of manned registers with self-service kiosks, face no restrictions at all.
That means a Rhode Island Aldi would need to staff extra registers while the Walmart down the road runs a wall of self-checkout machines with a single attendant. The competitive disadvantage is obvious. And the workers the bill claims to protect may find their hours cut anyway if stores respond by reducing self-checkout capacity rather than hiring more cashiers.
Bromberg's testimony captured the core problem. The bill doesn't regulate self-checkout. It regulates grocery stores. Every other business type that uses the same technology gets a pass.
When government picks winners and losers inside the same market, the losers are rarely the politicians who wrote the law. They're the shoppers stuck in longer lines and the workers whose stores can no longer compete.