Supermarkets racing to replace paper price tags with digital screens are running into a growing political backlash. As of mid-2026, lawmakers in roughly a dozen states and in Congress have introduced bills to restrict how grocers use customer data to set prices — a practice critics call “surveillance pricing” — with some measures going as far as banning the electronic shelf labels that make rapid price changes possible. The fight pits major chains like Walmart and Kroger against labor unions, consumer advocates and a bipartisan group of politicians.

The most concrete action so far came in Maryland. On April 28, Governor Wes Moore signed the Protection from Predatory Pricing Act, making Maryland the first state to ban dynamic pricing based on a shopper’s personal data. The law, which takes effect October 1, requires grocers larger than 15,000 square feet to keep prices fixed for at least one business day and bars the use of surveillance data to set individualized prices, with fines of $10,000 for a first violation and $25,000 after that. Notably, it stops short of banning the digital labels themselves.

The campaign has a powerful backer in organized labor. In February, the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which represents about 1.2 million workers including more than 800,000 in grocery, launched its Affordable Groceries and Good Jobs campaign, arguing that electronic shelf labels both enable price manipulation and threaten the jobs of clerks who once updated tags by hand. States including New York, Tennessee, Washington, Arizona, Nebraska and Oklahoma have introduced versions of the union’s model legislation, while California, Colorado, Illinois and New Jersey are weighing their own.

In Washington, the effort has gone bipartisan. Senators Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico and Jeff Merkley of Oregon introduced the Stop Price Gouging in Grocery Stores Act of 2026, which would ban electronic shelf labels in large stores and prohibit surveillance pricing, enforced by the Federal Trade Commission. In May, Representatives Josh Gottheimer and Mike Lawler unveiled the No Rigged Grocery Prices Act, targeting AI-driven pricing at both stores and delivery apps.

Retailers push back hard. Walmart, which aims to roll out electronic labels across its U.S. stores by the end of 2026, says the technology simply lets workers update planned price changes from a central system and insists it does not tailor prices to individual shoppers. The industry notes that price-gouging laws already exist and that the labels mainly improve accuracy and efficiency.

The stakes are commercial and political. Electronic shelf labels are a fast-growing market for retail-technology suppliers, and chains see them as central to cutting labor costs and competing on price. But with grocery inflation still squeezing households, surveillance pricing has become an easy target, and polling has found broad bipartisan support for restrictions. How the patchwork of state laws shakes out will shape how the nation’s largest retailers price the items in nearly every American’s cart.

JBizNews Desk
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