Maryland\u2019s Grocery Pricing Ban Takes Effect October 1

Surveillance camera mounted on a wall watching over a storefront, the kind that increasingly watches your grocery bill too — Photo via Unsplash

TL;DR: Maryland’s HB 895 (the Protection From Predatory Pricing Act) takes effect October 1, 2026, banning grocery stores with 15,000+ square feet from using your personal data to set individualized prices. Prices must stay fixed for at least one business day. The first offense costs a store up to $10,000. The second costs up to $25,000. On Friday, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont signed SB 4, making Connecticut the second state to ban surveillance pricing, and that law goes live the same day ^[1][2]. For shoppers, the three months between now and October 1 are the last unregulated stretch. Here’s how to find out whether your local store is currently using personalized pricing, and what to do about it.

What Changes on October 1

Two things happen the moment the law goes live in Maryland grocery stores large enough to count ^[3]:

The price on the shelf is the price at the register. No more individualized pricing based on your loyalty card history, your browsing data, your ZIP code, the device you shopped from, or any other personal information the store might have on you.
Prices can’t change faster than once a business day. A store can’t raise the price of milk on you at 2 p.m. because the algorithm noticed you always buy milk on Thursdays. Whatever the price was at opening is the price for that day.

For the rest of 2026, those rules apply only in Maryland and only at grocery stores with at least 15,000 square feet of selling space. That covers the big chains: Walmart Supercenters, most Kroger stores, Whole Foods, Target stores with full grocery, Giant, Safeway, Wegmans, and the like. It doesn’t cover Aldi, Trader Joe’s, most Lidl locations, drug stores, gas stations, or non-food retailers ^[3].

It also doesn’t cover what happens in Maryland’s other 49 states. Connecticut’s law goes live the same day for the same purpose, but with a different scope. Everywhere else, the algorithms keep running.

The Three-Month Window

Governor Wes Moore signed HB 895 on April 28, 2026. The Maryland General Assembly passed it 100–31 in the House and 41–1 in the Senate. The law was a response to two things: a December 2025 Consumer Reports investigation that caught Instacart charging different shoppers up to 23% more for identical items in the same store, and a 2024 FTC study that identified at least 250 U.S. businesses using surveillance pricing technology sold by vendors like Mastercard, Revionics, Bloomreach, JPMorgan Chase, and McKinsey ^[4][5][6].

What the three-month gap gives stores: time to audit their pricing systems, rip out the personalized-pricing logic, retrain staff, and update signage. The law includes a 45-day cure period after a violation is identified, so stores get a chance to fix problems before fines kick in ^[3].

What the three-month gap gives shoppers: a final window to test whether your local store is currently using surveillance pricing, and a chance to build a paper trail before the law is on the books.

Connecticut Signed Its Own Version on Friday

On June 5, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont signed SB 4, a sweeping privacy package that makes Connecticut the second state in the country to ban surveillance pricing ^[1]. The law takes effect in stages (the privacy threshold change kicks in July) and the surveillance pricing ban goes live the same day as Maryland’s, October 1, 2026.

Connecticut’s law is broader in some ways and narrower in others. It exempts loyalty programs and cost-based differences like delivery distance, just like Maryland ^[1][2]. But it also bundles in a state-run data broker deletion system modeled on California’s Delete Act, a ban on the sale of precise geolocation data, and new rules for facial recognition notice. Two states, same deadline, overlapping scope. If you live in either, the same playbook applies.

For the rest of the country: 24 states have now introduced more than 40 surveillance pricing bills this year, according to a CalMatters analysis published May 15 ^[7]. That includes a $12,500-per-violation bill in California (AB 2564), a Pallone-led congressional inquiry naming 25 major retailers (Walmart, Target, Amazon, Kroger, and others), and a New York AG campaign to ban the practice outright ^[8][9].

The Loyalty Card Loophole

This is the part the Maryland law’s strongest critics keep pointing at, and it’s worth understanding ^[10].

HB 895 exempts “traditional sales, promotions, loyalty program discounts, location-based tax differences, and price corrections for errors” from the personalized-pricing ban ^[3]. Read that again: loyalty program discounts are exempt. If a store frames a personalized price as a “loyalty program benefit,” the law may not apply.

That’s a meaningful carve-out. The Instacart investigation found the 23% price gap between shoppers; a lot of that gap is exactly the kind of pricing that a loyalty program could absorb. Walmart+, Amazon Prime, Target Circle 360, Kroger Boost: each is technically a subscription or loyalty program. Each can be used as a justification to keep individualized pricing in some form.

Consumer Reports, in its official statement on the Maryland law, called for tightening the loyalty exemption language ^[10]. Until that happens, the safest read of the law is: loyalty card discounts are fine, but loyalty card price increases for non-members are the gray zone. If you walk into a Maryland Kroger on October 2 and the digital shelf tag shows a higher price for you than for the person with the Boost membership in the next aisle, that’s a question worth raising with the Maryland Attorney General’s office.

Five Tests to Run Before October 1

Until the law is enforced, here’s how to figure out whether your local store is using surveillance pricing, and how to document it if they are.

1. Compare prices with and without the loyalty card. Pick a basket of 10–15 items. Price them once with the loyalty card attached to your account, and once with a fresh account or no account. If the totals differ, that’s not surveillance pricing per se (it’s a loyalty discount) but the gap tells you how the store is segmenting customers.

2. Compare prices across devices. Open the store’s app on two phones, ideally on different carriers. Some stores personalize prices based on device fingerprint or the demographics inferred from your profile. If the prices differ, screenshot both.

3. Compare prices across locations. This one requires a friend in a different ZIP code. Have them check the same items at the same chain from a different address. The FTC’s 2024 investigation found that hotel chains were charging $500+ more per night to Bay Area residents than to shoppers in less affluent ZIP codes ^[6]. Grocery stores have the same data.

4. Watch the digital price tags move. Electronic shelf labels (the small e-ink displays replacing paper price tags) can update up to six times per minute. Walmart is rolling them out to all U.S. locations. Kroger has used them since 2018 ^[11]. Sit in one aisle for 20 minutes with the store’s app open. If the prices start shifting, that’s not illegal yet (the Maryland law only kicks in October 1) but it’s worth screenshotting.

5. Check the in-app price vs. the shelf price. This is the easiest test. Open the app, scan an item, and compare the in-app price to the shelf tag. If they don’t match, the store is showing different prices to different customers right now. The Maryland law makes that a deceptive trade practice starting October 1.

Document everything. Screenshots, timestamps, store location, and the specific items. If you’re in Maryland and want to file a complaint after October 1, the Maryland Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division takes reports online ^[12].

What the Law Doesn’t Cover

HB 895 is narrow on purpose. The 15,000-square-foot floor excludes smaller grocery stores, specialty food shops, restaurants, prepared-food vendors, gas stations, pharmacies, and convenience stores. Non-food retail is also out of scope: your Amazon cart, your Uber ride, your hotel booking are not protected by HB 895 ^[3].

The bigger gaps are at the state and federal level. Colorado’s earlier surveillance pricing law took effect in 2024 and covers a broader base of businesses, but enforcement has been slow ^[1]. Twenty-four states have introduced bills this year; only three (Colorado, Maryland, Connecticut) have actually passed anything. There’s still no federal ban, despite the Pallone inquiry and the FTC’s 2024 study.

That means for the foreseeable future, the price you pay depends on which side of a state line you’re standing on. If you drive from Baltimore to Wilmington, Delaware, the same chain’s same product can legally be priced differently for you based on your data. That’s the post-October 1 reality.

The Bigger Map

The 2026 wave of surveillance pricing legislation is the first real legislative response to a decade of opaque algorithmic pricing. Consumer Reports caught Instacart. The FTC sent orders to eight vendors. The New York AG sent a demand letter to Instacart and is now campaigning for a statewide ban ^[13]. Rep. Frank Pallone sent inquiry letters to 25 retailers in May, naming names ^[8]. A CalMatters analysis from May 15 found 24 states with active bills, more than 40 in total ^[7].

Public opinion is moving with the laws. A survey cited by New York AG Letitia James found 66% of New Yorkers support banning surveillance pricing. California’s AB 2564, with $12,500 per violation, is the bill to watch. If it passes, it effectively sets a national floor: companies don’t build separate pricing systems for California, they just comply everywhere ^[7].

For now, the practical reality is two states, one deadline, three months of grace period. Maryland shoppers, Connecticut shoppers, and anyone who wants to know what comes next: the playbook is the same.

What to Do

Whether you live in Maryland, Connecticut, or neither:

Drop loyalty cards for price-testing. The discount might cost more than it saves. Every swipe feeds the pricing engine data about what you buy, when, and how often. Use the card only for the savings you can verify.
Shop without an account where you can. Cash transactions don’t get linked to your profile. In states with full privacy laws, opting out of “sale of personal information” covers pricing data too.
Use a VPN when shopping online. Your IP address and location are pricing inputs. Mask them.
Compare prices across devices, accounts, and locations. If you can find a price gap, screenshot it. That’s evidence.
File complaints in Maryland and Connecticut after October 1. Maryland AG Consumer Protection Division ^[12]. Connecticut AG consumer protection. If you find a price that changes for you based on personal data, that’s now a deceptive trade practice.
Support legislation in your state. Twenty-four states have bills. Find your state legislature’s website, search for “surveillance pricing,” and send a comment.

Three Months Out

On October 1, 2026, two states will flip a switch. The price on the shelf becomes the price at the register, in stores large enough to count, in two states, for one business day at a time. It’s narrow. It’s the first real test. And the rest of the country is watching.

By the time the holiday shopping season starts in November, we’ll know whether the law actually changed what shoppers pay, whether the loyalty card exemption swallowed the rule, and whether the FTC and state AGs are willing to enforce it. Until then, the only thing the three-month window guarantees is a clear before-and-after comparison for the people paying attention.

Pay attention.

Sources

Published: June 6, 2026