The Fair Price Protection Act is the first law of its kind to allow consumers to take action when their rights have been violated
Trenton, New Jersey – New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill signed into law the Fair Price Protection Act today, making New Jersey the third state in the country to enact legislation aimed at curbing personalized pricing. The Fair Price Protection Act will prohibit personalized pricing in the sale of groceries and foodstuffs. It is the first law of its kind to allow consumers to take action when their rights have been violated, rather than requiring consumers to petition the Attorney General to take action. Earlier in 2026, Maryland and Connecticut signed legislation aimed at banning the practice. Meanwhile, the New York legislature also passed a bill, which is awaiting Governor Hochul’s signature.
Personalized pricing, also known as surveillance pricing, occurs when companies use consumers’ personal data, such as their browsing history, real-time location, inferred family size, or income, to set different prices for different consumers on the same item.
“No consumer should have to pay more for groceries because a company knows what they’re searching for online, what their income is, the makeup of their household, or where they go,” said Grace Gedye, senior policy analyst at Consumer Reports. “Momentum is growing nationwide to address this affordability issue. We applaud Assemblymember Onyema and the New Jersey Legislature for making this issue a priority, and particularly for ensuring that consumers in New Jersey can enforce their rights under this new law. Still, the law includes some loopholes that we encourage lawmakers to revisit and improve upon during the next session.”
Consumer Reports previously testified before the Assembly Commerce and Economic Development Committee in Trenton in support of the bill, while encouraging the legislature to make tweaks. CR also submitted testimony in late June, when the bill was heard by budget committees.
CR recommends the New Jersey Legislature revisit the law during the next legislative session to strengthen the Fair Price Protection Act, including by:
- Require clear, specific, and public disclosures of loyalty program discounts and price benefits, along with the accompanying criteria and conditions for receiving the discount, to ensure that loyalty programs are not a way for grocers to do secret price discrimination
- Amend definition of “bona fide discount” to ensure that the “original” price was actually offered for a reasonably substantial period of time
- Expand the definition of location to ensure that consumers can’t be profiled and charged different prices based on the locations they frequent, whether they are currently far from competitor stores, and more
Background:
Other states are considering surveillance pricing bans including California. Additional information on Consumer Reports’ campaign to Make the Price Right can be found here.
In May 2025, Consumer Reports investigated Kroger’s consumer data practices and found that they were collecting vast data profiles for individual shoppers, with inferences about their income, family size, education level, gender, and more. One shopper who requested their data under a state privacy law received a 62-page profile.
In December 2025, CR, along with partners Groundwork Collaborative and More Perfect Union, published an investigation into Instacart’s pricing tactics. CR had nearly 400 consumers shop for the same basket of goods at the same time. Analysis of the shopping data found that consumers were paying different prices for the same products from the same store at the same time. The investigation found that Instacart’s algorithmic pricing experiments could result in price differences as high as 23% for certain products and could cost families more than $1,200 a year at checkout. Soon after, Instacart announced in a company blog post that it would end the program that resulted in different shoppers being shown different prices for groceries on its platform. However, Instacart told CR that it would still allow its partners—grocery retailers and food brands—to test different types of promotions and discounts on their customers through the platform.
CR’s most recent investigation of Uber and Lyft’s AI-driven pricing tactics found that the companies routinely charge different customers significantly different prices for the same rides ordered at roughly the same time. CR also found that both apps regularly advertised supposed discounts off what appeared to be inflated original prices. (Note: CR defines “same rides” as trips from the same starting point to the same destination priced within minutes—and often seconds—of one another.)
Contact: cyrus.rassool@consumer.org