New Jersey lawmakers are pushing to strip retailers of the ability to use personal data, artificial intelligence, and surveillance technology to set grocery prices, advancing a bill that would ban the practice statewide and apply to third-party delivery platforms as well.
The New Jersey Senate Commerce Committee approved the "Fair Price Protection Act" on March 16, sending it to the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee for further consideration. The bill, introduced in February, would make it unlawful for retailers to use electronic shelf labels tied to "personalized algorithmic pricing, surveillance pricing, or any pricing tactic that employs consumer data."
In plain terms: the price you see on the shelf could no longer change based on who you are, when you shop, or what you Googled last night.
According to The U.S. Sun, the proposal would ban retailers from using "any pricing strategy that determines or varies the sale price of groceries or other foodstuffs" based on personal data. That includes the digital price tags grocery giants like Walmart and Kroger have deployed across their stores, at least insofar as those tags are connected to algorithms that adjust what individual shoppers pay.
The restrictions don't stop at brick-and-mortar stores. Third-party grocery delivery platforms would also be barred from using surveillance data to charge different customers different prices for the same items.
The bill still permits:
Retailers would also be required to use a method that allows for a non-digital presentation of prices for groceries and other foodstuffs. In other words, if you want to sell bread in New Jersey, you need a price tag a customer can read without wondering whether an algorithm decided they should pay more for it.
This is one of those rare cases where the political instinct cutting across party lines lands on solid ground. Conservatives have long been skeptical of Big Tech's reach into everyday life, and the idea that a corporation should be able to monitor your browsing habits and then charge you more for eggs is exactly the kind of crony-capitalist overreach that populist conservatism exists to challenge.
New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat, used her budget address earlier this month to aim for the practice. She framed it in terms conservatives should find familiar:
"If you have to shop after work, when stores are crowded, you'll pay more than if you're free to shop at noon. It means if the store knows you just searched for a certain product online, it might charge a higher price. That's outrageous."
She's not wrong on the facts, even if her instinct is to reach for regulation as a first resort. The question isn't whether this pricing model is predatory. It plainly is. The question is whether the legislative framework New Jersey is building will actually protect consumers or simply create a new compliance maze that raises costs in different ways.
State Senator Joe Cryan put the case more bluntly in a news release:
"Working people are already confronted with increased grocery costs that are difficult to afford."
"They should be protected from the intrusive use of artificial intelligence, algorithms, and personal data to exploit their food purchases."
Again, the diagnosis is correct. Working families are already squeezed. Adding a layer of algorithmic price manipulation on top of inflation isn't innovation. It's an extraction.
New Jersey isn't acting alone. Minnesota, New York, Oklahoma, Washington, Arizona, Nebraska, Maryland, and Tennessee are all reportedly working on measures restricting how retailers determine prices. The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union has endorsed New Jersey's bill and is pressing the issue in other states as well.
The UFCW said in a statement:
"New Jersey legislators are taking a strong first step towards protecting families and workers from these harmful pricing technologies. No one should have to watch prices jump in front of their eyes as they buy food for their family."
The union's involvement will make some conservatives instinctively suspicious, and that skepticism isn't entirely misplaced. But the underlying concern here isn't a labor issue dressed up as consumer protection. It's a genuine question about whether corporations should be allowed to use surveillance infrastructure to price-discriminate against individual shoppers buying groceries.
There's a lazy critique that says any regulation of retail pricing is anti-market. That misunderstands what a market actually requires. Free markets depend on transparent information. A buyer walks into a store, sees a price, and decides whether the exchange is worth it. That's the transaction. That's the freedom.
Surveillance pricing inverts the relationship. The seller knows more about the buyer than the buyer knows about the seller's pricing logic. The price isn't set by supply and demand in any classical sense. It's set by how much the algorithm calculates you're willing to pay based on your data profile. That's not a market. It's a shakedown with better software.
Conservatives who defend this practice in the name of free enterprise are defending the wrong thing. The principle worth protecting isn't a corporation's right to deploy AI against its own customers. It's the consumer's right to face an honest price.
Walmart and Kroger have reportedly defended their use of these technologies, though neither company has offered a public case compelling enough to quote. Their silence on the specifics speaks louder than any press release would.
The Fair Price Protection Act still has to clear the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee before reaching a full vote. Governor Sherrill has signaled she wants to "pass legislation limiting this kind of for-profit surveillance by Big Tech," which suggests it won't die on her desk if it reaches it.
The real test will be in the details. A bill that bans algorithmic price manipulation while preserving loyalty programs and promotional discounts threads a reasonable needle. But legislative language has a way of expanding once lobbyists and committee staffers get their hands on it. The grocery industry will push back hard, and the final version may look different from the one that passed committee on March 16.
For now, the principle is sound: the price of a gallon of milk shouldn't depend on what time you clocked out or what your phone told the store about you on the way in.