Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson on Monday, Oct. 5, signed a law that bars large grocery chains and grocery delivery services from charging shoppers different prices based on their personal data. The law bans what is often called surveillance pricing: setting different prices for different shoppers based on what a company tracks or guesses about them, such as their location, browsing or shopping history. The City Council passed it on Sept. 22. The mayor's office calls it the first such law passed by a U.S. city, and says it will curb practices in which companies use AI and personal data to push prices higher for some customers. Maryland, Connecticut and New Jersey have already passed state laws against the practice.
The law covers grocery chains with 20 or more stores worldwide, delivery services with 100 or more employees worldwide that bring groceries to Seattle shoppers, and other large stores with at least 10,000 square feet of groceries. Grocery chains may not price anything in the store this way. For the other large stores, the ban covers groceries, diapers, hygiene products and over-the-counter medicines. Convenience stores are exempt. The mayor's office says stores cannot use details such as a shopper's job status, race, gender, browsing history, social media activity or chatbot conversations to set what they pay. Showing each shopper a random price counts too, and stores may not use digital price tags on shelves to display such prices.
Many discounts stay legal. Stores can still offer coupons and sales open to everyone, discounts for whole groups such as seniors, students, teachers and military members, and loyalty-program prices, as long as every member gets them or they go to groups of members sorted only by what they have bought before, not to one person, and the store does not use that history to guess what a shopper will pay. Stores must publish how those groups are set. Delivery prices can still vary with what a delivery costs, such as the address, order size, time of day or weather, as long as the address is the only personal detail used. Prices in stores must be clearly posted.
The ordinance points to a 2025 test in which 437 shoppers put identical items in their Instacart carts. About 75 percent of the products were offered at different prices to different customers, and shoppers buying from one Seattle Safeway through Instacart were shown different "original" prices, the price a discount is measured against, for the same saltine crackers, from $5.93 to $6.69. The test showed that prices differed from shopper to shopper, not what decided them. Shoppers who are harmed can sue grocery chains with 25 or more stores in Washington, the large mixed stores and delivery services, with penalties of up to $3,000 per shopper and up to $10,000 for each later violation against the same shopper, capped at $1 million per lawsuit. The City Attorney can also investigate and sue, and stores must keep records for three years.
The rules start on Sept. 1, 2027. According to a news report, a regional grocery trade group says it supports barring stores from using personal data to charge shoppers more, but that the line between banned pricing and voluntary, personalized savings programs is not clear enough and could put discounts at risk. The same report says Safeway told it the company does not use personal information to raise prices, and uses shopper data for voluntary digital coupons and member prices. The city's finance department can write more detailed rules, including on loyalty-program tiers, and it is not yet clear what they will say. It is also not clear how the city will check the software stores use to set prices, or whether any company will challenge the law in court.