The Maryland Protection from Predatory Pricing Act (HB 895) is a state law signed by Gov. Wes Moore during the week of April 27, 2026 that restricts algorithmic surveillance pricing — the use of personalized pricing systems that condition the price offered to a consumer on data inferred about that consumer's willingness or ability to pay. It is among the first state-level statutes that squarely target AI pricing systems as such, distinct from broader AI bias, disclosure, and accountability regimes such as the Colorado AI Act. (Source: insideaipolicy.com)
Status and timeline
The bill identifier is HB 895. Gov. Moore signed it into law during the week of April 27, 2026, and it takes effect October 1, 2026 (per Fortune May 4, 2026 reporting). (Source: fortune.com)
Scope and provisions
According to Sanya Mansoor's Guardian April 29, 2026 piece, the law bans grocers and third-party delivery services from using a person's personal data to set higher prices. The protected data inputs include location, internet search history, and demographics.
The statute contains several carveouts that anti-surveillance advocates flag as loopholes. Discounts offered via loyalty programs are exempt, as is promotional pricing. The ban is also asymmetric: it prohibits setting higher prices via surveillance but does not address lowering prices. Tom McBrien, counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center / EPIC, said the exemptions "allow other ways of arriving at the same outcome that are just harder for consumers to detect," noting that if a company raises prices for everyone and then offers individualized discounts, "you've arrived at the same outcome." (Source: theguardian.com)
Enforcement
The law provides no private right of action; only the state Attorney General can enforce it. Lee Hepner, Senior Legal Counsel at the American Economic Liberties Project, characterized this as a central weakness: "The private right of action is a fundamental piece of accountability. A meaningful threat of enforcement is the only effective deterrent to violating the law." Consumer Reports said it appreciated Moore prioritizing the issue but decried the law's "weak enforcement provisions," urging revisitation in 2027 to build in stronger protections and remove loopholes. (Source: theguardian.com)
Reactions
Hepner argued that the law's main risk lies in its potential to serve as a template for other states: "The biggest threat of the Maryland bill is that other states will see it as a model bill that they should replicate in their own jurisdictions. It is very important for us — as we try to get this legislation right in states from Colorado to California to New York — that the Maryland bill not be held up as a model, but in fact be recognized as an industry-written permission slip to engage in ongoing discrimination." On this account, the statute may have been substantially shaped by industry lobbying to produce a template that future states could replicate without the protections that anti-surveillance-pricing advocates would require. (Source: theguardian.com)
The distinction the law turns on separates uniform-but-dynamic pricing from individually-targeted pricing, the doctrinal handle these surveillance-pricing statutes use.
Federal context
The Federal Trade Commission, under the prior Biden administration, opened an investigation into surveillance pricing and published initial findings in January 2025 documenting examples in clothing, beauty products, home goods, and hardware. Current FTC chair Andrew Ferguson characterized the prior administration's report as a "rush job," which advocates cite as making federal action against surveillance pricing unlikely under the current administration; per EPIC's McBrien, this is the explicit context for state-level action. Separately, after a Consumer Reports investigation, Instacart announced that it would no longer use technology allowing grocery stores to charge different shoppers different prices for the same groceries, while claiming it had never engaged in the practice. (Source: theguardian.com)
As of May 2, 2026, no federal preemption-relevant bill specifically targets surveillance pricing; the SECURE Data Act does not directly address pricing systems. The FTC has signaled interest in using Section 5 against deceptive pricing personalization. No adjacent litigation is currently tracked.
State pipeline
As of the May 4, 2026 update, similar bills targeting surveillance pricing are active in Colorado, California, Massachusetts, Illinois, and New Jersey. (Source: fortune.com) The Guardian reporting similarly lists Colorado, California, Massachusetts, Illinois, and New Jersey as states with bills under consideration. (Source: theguardian.com) Consumer advocates have identified Colorado as the next likely battleground.
Related
The Act pairs with the New York Algorithmic Pricing Act, an earlier state-level pricing-AI statute; together the two states represent an early jurisdictional foothold for the algorithmic-surveillance-pricing concern. The underlying concept of algorithmic and surveillance pricing is covered in AI Economic Primitives, and the doctrine intersects with the data-collection concerns in Three Privacy Problems AI Creates, since targeted pricing depends on consumer profiling.
Relationships
- instance-of: Surveillance Pricing — state-level restriction on the practice
- related: New York Algorithmic Pricing Disclosure Act (NY S 3008), Colorado AI Act (SB 24-205) (next-battleground state), AI Economic Primitives, Three Privacy Problems AI Creates, Janet Mills (Maine governor; vetoed the data-center moratorium during the same week — a parallel state-level AI-policy decision but in the opposite direction).