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consumer protection
Maryland Becomes First US State to Ban Surveillance Pricing for Groceries
A new law will ban retailers from using shoppers' personal data to hike grocery prices—but consumer advocates warn it contains loopholes that companies could exploit.
Apr 27, 2026
Maryland will become the first US state to outlaw "surveillance pricing" for groceries after Democratic Gov. Wes Moore signed a bill on Monday barring retailers and food delivery services from using customers' personal data to alter prices.
The practice has already become rampant in online commerce, with companies like Amazon, Uber, and Delta Air Lines accused of using everything from browsing history and location to demographic information to squeeze every possible cent from consumers.
The Protection from Predatory Pricing Act, which takes effect in Maryland beginning on October 1, targets the growing use of such tactics by grocery chains and delivery apps, which Moore has accused of using "new technologies to drive up the bill for working families."
These include electronic shelf labels, which advocates have warned could allow companies to instantly change grocery prices based on the time of day, weather, and other factors that influence consumer demand.
“Digital price tags are replacing paper ones. It’s happening because we are having cameras that are watching aisles, it’s happening because we have apps that are moving from search-based to predictive,” Moore said.
Moore has cited an investigation published in December by Consumer Reports and the Groundwork Collaborative, which found that Instacart was running a “pricing experiment” that charged some customers as much as 23% more for the same items than others based on shoppers' personal data.
Another investigation by Consumer Reports last May found that Kroger was collecting lengthy profiles of individual customers, including estimates of their household size, education level, income, and even perceived "loyalty" to the company, along with sometimes dozens of other pages of personal data.
"Surveillance pricing can drive up the price of food," said Grace Gedye, senior policy analyst at Consumer Reports. "Retailers have a lot of data about individual shoppers: how often we search for or hover over particular items, whether we live near competitor stores, inferences about our likes and dislikes, our dietary needs, our income, our family size, and more."
"Surveillance pricing," she said, "allows companies to take advantage of that information asymmetry and charge you as much as they think you’re individually willing to pay.”
To combat this, Maryland's new law requires that shelf prices remain steady for one full business day. It also bars retailers from using surveillance data, such as inferred income, ethnicity, family size, neighborhood, or purchasing history, to raise prices for individuals.
Companies that violate the law will receive civil penalties of up to $10,000 for first offenses and $25,000 for repeat offenses. They will also be given 45 days to correct violations before these fines apply.
Gedye said, "While it’s encouraging to see the Maryland Legislature take up this issue, this law has loopholes that will limit its real-world impact."
The law faced fierce opposition from industry groups, including the Maryland Retailers Alliance. The group ultimately withdrew its opposition, but only after several new provisions were introduced that Consumer Reports said "undercut" the law's effectiveness.
While the law bans the use of personal data to set higher prices, the group said there is no way to determine what constitutes a "baseline or standard price," meaning price fluctuations could easily be marketed as discounts. It also said companies could use loyalty and subscription programs—which are exempt from the law—to raise prices.
The group also warned that the law is too hard to enforce, since only the Maryland attorney general, not customers themselves, can bring suits, which it said is a "departure from Maryland’s primary consumer protection law."
Many other states—including California, New York, and Illinois—are considering similar bans, and legislation has been proposed at the federal level to outlaw surveillance and surge-pricing practices nationwide.
Gedye said, "We urge other state legislatures considering personalized pricing legislation to build in stronger consumer protections and avoid loopholes that weakened this bill.”
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10 Ways Der Führer Donald Has Already Shut Down the Federal Government
As an official government shutdown looms, here is a brief tour through the wreckage wrought by Trump so far.
Sep 28, 2025
The media is reporting on the approaching government shutdown on September 30, due to an impasse between the two congressional parties. US President Donald Trump is threatening more mass firings of federal workers should this occur.
Der Führer Donald has already shut down vital government programs since he ascended to his elected dictatorship on January 20. The shutdowns of critical agencies, lifesaving programs, and law enforcement are uniformly illegal and constitute impeachable offenses. Under the Constitution, only Congress can terminate or limit many of the programs axed by the rampaging Monarch.
Here is a brief tour through the wreckage wrought by Trump, Elon Musk, and Trump’s lawless maniac, the clenched-jawed Russell Vought, director of Trump’s Office of Management and Budget.
- Trump has illegally and impeachably closed the Agency for International Development, fast winding down critical humanitarian aid—medicine, food, clean water, etc.—to millions of impoverished families in poor countries abroad. Tens of thousands have already perished, according to aid officials.
- He has illegally and impeachably paralyzed the protector of consumers—the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—that returned many billions of dollars to consumers from corporate rip-off schemes, mostly from the finance companies. Throwing corporate law and order out the window, Trump is setting records for being soft on corporate crime—ending dozens of underway prosecutions of companies by the Justice Department.
- He has illegally and impeachably closed the cabinet-level Department of Education, throwing student aid programs and the status of existing loans into dark holes of chaos.
- Across other federal agencies, Trump has closed down crucial scientific programs designed to understand and alert the people to mega storms and wildfires, infectious diseases, looming pandemics abroad, and expand basic research in medical science for the public’s health.
- With his toady Environmental Protection Agency Administrator, Lee Zeldin, Trump is chopping our protection against deadly toxic air, water, and soil pollution into pieces. He is closing down the EPA’s celebrated scientific research section; firing people everywhere; and declaring that the EPA has no authority to deal with the oil, gas, and coal fossil fuel emissions causing global warming. Crazily, he has blocked lower-priced solar energy and wind power projects, calling windmills “ugly.” This is just deranged.
- Federal Emergency Management Agency employees have signed a desperate petition to Trump to stop strip-mining the agency, stop slowing its emergency response time, and restore the staff pushed out during the Department of Government Efficiency lawlessness. For their courage, Trump fired or suspended many of these hurricane, flood, and wildfire rescuers, as he does for civil servants who sign other letters and petitions because they report they are unable to perform their work because of his actions. He has weakened an already weak Occupational Safety and Health Administration and further jeopardized the health and safety of Americans in their workplace.
- Trump has reduced successful programs such as Meals on Wheels America, Head Start, and aims to get rid of the Job Corps and AmeriCorps. Again, illegally defying congressional mandates.
- Trump, who eats well, is cutting food stamps for millions of poor Americans. This is hurting desperate families and supplying farmers.
- Earlier, Trump got through Congress a law that will cause over 10 million people to lose their Medicaid; nearly 5 million could lose healthcare coverage soon when the elimination of subsidies causes prices to skyrocket under Obamacare scheduled by the end of this year. These serious deprivations, sure to cost lives, are what the congressional Democrats are insisting be reversed before they go along with the omnibus government funding bill. GOP leaders, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), are resisting. Of course, they have good health insurance paid for by taxpayers.
- Trump has shut down diplomacy abroad, replacing it with threats, violence, fantasies, and boastful rhetoric. The skills of the Foreign Service in the State Department are frozen under the arrogant Secretary of State, Netanyahu toady, Marco Rubio.
Many of the above-noted cuts in programs are to pay for more tax cuts to the under-taxed super rich and profit-glutted corporations. Note that Trump is NOT cutting hundreds of billions of dollars annually in corporate welfare—subsidies, handouts, giveaways, and bailouts. Nor is he going after huge fraud on the government in programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and military procurement. Trump is willing to overlook avaricious, entrenched corporate vendors and contractors bilking Uncle Sam.
Cracking down on corporate fraud and abuse would risk his own enormous self-enrichment schemes, would end his misuse of the office of the presidency and limit his use of the White House as business headquarters. Trump, regardless of his deeply phony “populism,” has always been a hardcore corporatist!
Trump, who is egomaniacal, ignorant, and often deranged with his daily blatant lies against reality, is a world-class, cunning personality. He secures the abject loyalty of his major appointees by nominating either totally inexperienced, incompetent people to run agencies and departments or turncoats who, once defiant, become obeisant.
The former are relishing their sudden unmerited upward mobility and are not about to make waves. The latter, like Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F.Kennedy Jr., feel they are under suspicion and double down on goosestepping with their boss. Neither recruitment category is likely to produce any whistleblowers. That’s how cunning Trump is with his widely criticized nominations.
Stay tuned. Let’s see how effective the Democratic Party’s polemics are to counter Trump, already blaming the Democrats for the Republican Party’s government shutdown. The Democrats can start by driving the point home to the American people about the terrible impacts Trump’s present government closures will quickly have on their health, safety, and livelihoods.
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How Trump Promotes Grotesque Corporate Lawlessness
Dropping corporate cases en masse, as the Trump administration is doing, portends a return to recklessness and greed that fueled corporate catastrophes like Wall Street’s 2008 financial crisis.
May 08, 2025
“Corporations First.” That’s the slogan that would truthfully describe the Trump administration’s approach to law enforcement, not “America First.”
A new investigation by my organization shows that the Trump administration is dropping investigations and enforcement actions against corporations that showered money on Trump’s inauguration earlier this year.
Seventy-one big businesses, which were facing at least 102 ongoing federal enforcement actions at the time of Trump’s inauguration, collectively gave a whopping $57 million to the Trump-Vance inaugural fund, we found. And many may now be collecting special favors.
Time will tell whether the payments by other big corporate inauguration donors—like Amazon, Apple, Boeing, FedEx, Goldman Sachs, Google, Johnson & Johnson, Nvidia, and Pilgrim’s Pride—will see enforcement go away, too.
Trump’s inaugural haul from corporations facing investigations and lawsuits alone is comparable to the total amount raised for the inaugurations of former Presidents Barack Obama in 2009 ($53 million) and Joe Biden in 2021 ($62 million). And it’s just a third of the record-breaking $239 million Trump collected overall, $153 million of which came from corporate donors.
Regardless of president or party, private funding for the presidential inauguration poses a serious threat of corrupt influence buying by corporations and the wealthy. Unlike the vast majority of Americans, they can ingratiate themselves to an incoming administration with six- and seven-figure checks.
Donations by for-profit corporations are particularly suspect—corporations’ purpose, after all, is to amass wealth for private investors, an agenda that frequently pits them against laws and regulations that protect consumers, workers, and the broader public interest.
We may not know exactly what favors corporations might seek. But it’s reasonable to assume that getting rid of penalties or investigations for ripping off consumers, exploiting workers, polluting our environment, and engaging in illegal and unfair business practices would be high on the list.
Public Citizen has compiled a list of more than 500 enforcement actions against corporations that the Trump administration inherited from the Biden administration. During President Trump’s first 100 days alone, federal agencies halted or dropped at least 126 of these enforcement actions.
These include actions against 15 corporate inauguration donors whose cases were dismissed or withdrawn, plus six whose cases were halted. These 21 corporations collectively donated $18 million to the inaugural fund.
These include companies accused of violating consumer financial protections, such Bank of America, Capital One, JPMorgan, and Walmart; some crypto businesses accused of violating securities laws, such as Coinbase, Crypto.com, Kraken, and Ripple; private prison corporations that allegedly mistreated inmates, like CoreCivic and GEO Group; and businesses accused of engaging in illegal bribery schemes in foreign countries, including Cognizant, Pfizer, and Toyota.
Time will tell whether the payments by other big corporate inauguration donors—like Amazon, Apple, Boeing, FedEx, Goldman Sachs, Google, Johnson & Johnson, Nvidia, and Pilgrim’s Pride—will see enforcement go away, too.
To be fair, some cases against corporate inauguration donors do appear to be proceeding unhindered. The antitrust cases against Google and Meta are proceeding, the FTC’s case against Uber for deceptive billing practices has been filed, and Gilead Pharmaceuticals is being required to pay $202 million to settle allegations of paying illegal kickbacks to doctors.
These signs of ongoing enforcement are a good thing. But among the more than 100 cases being dropped and halted, they’re exceptional. Because of the mass firings of federal workers at enforcement agencies, they likely represent the conclusion of past enforcement efforts, not the continuation of an ongoing trend.
Dropping corporate cases en masse, as the Trump administration is doing, is a greenlight for corporate lawlessness. It portends a return to recklessness and greed that fueled corporate catastrophes like Wall Street’s 2008 financial crisis, the Oxycontin-fueled opioid crisis, BP’s oil spill disaster, and Boeing’s deadly 737 Max crashes.
It is the definition of “corporations first.”
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