A carton of eggs at your local grocery store might cost you more than it costs your neighbor, and you would never know it. That is the scenario New Jersey lawmakers are trying to prevent with Senate Bill 3732, introduced in the state legislature in April 2026. The bill would outlaw the use of algorithms to set personalized or fluctuating grocery prices, with fines reaching $20,000 for repeat offenders.
It is one of the most specific state-level attempts yet to draw a legal boundary around data-driven pricing on essential goods, and it arrives at a moment when regulators, consumer advocates, and shoppers are all asking the same question: Should a grocery store be allowed to charge you more for milk because of what it knows about you?
What the bill would do
SB 3732 targets three pricing methods when applied to groceries and foodstuffs:
- Dynamic pricing, which adjusts costs in real time based on demand or supply conditions.
- Surveillance pricing, which sets prices using data collected about individual consumers, such as browsing habits, purchase history, or location.
- Personalized algorithmic pricing, which combines those approaches to charge different shoppers different amounts for the same product at the same retailer.
Under the bill, any business caught using these methods to sell groceries would be committing an unlawful practice under New Jersey’s Consumer Fraud Act. Civil penalties would start at up to $10,000 for a first violation and climb to $20,000 for each subsequent offense. Enforcement would run through the state Attorney General’s office using the existing Consumer Fraud Act framework, meaning no new regulatory body would be created.
The practical effect for shoppers: the price you see for a gallon of milk or a bag of rice at a given store would be the same price every other customer sees at that store at that moment. No hidden markups based on your browsing data. No quiet surcharges triggered by your zip code or spending patterns. Familiar, disclosed differences like loyalty card discounts, weekly sales, and in-store promotions would still be permitted.
The bill’s scope is deliberately narrow. It covers groceries and foodstuffs only. Ride-hailing apps, concert tickets, hotel rooms, and other sectors where dynamic pricing is already standard would not be affected. Lawmakers appear to be treating algorithmic pricing for food as a fundamentally different question than price experimentation on discretionary purchases.
Why now: the Instacart fallout and the FTC’s findings
SB 3732 did not emerge in a vacuum. Over the past two years, a series of investigations and regulatory actions have made algorithmic grocery pricing a concrete, documented concern rather than a theoretical one.
Reporting by the advocacy group More Perfect Union revealed that Instacart had been running an item-level price testing program. Different users logged into the platform could see different prices for the same item at the same store. In some documented cases, the price of eggs varied by several dollars depending on which account was viewing them.
New York Attorney General Letitia James responded by sending a formal letter to Instacart demanding answers about the practice. She criticized the company for burying disclosures about personalized pricing in fine print. Instacart subsequently ended its item price testing program following public reporting and regulatory pressure.
At the federal level, the Federal Trade Commission published a staff report examining surveillance pricing practices across multiple industries in 2024. The report found that companies were using personal data, including location, browsing behavior, and demographic information, to tailor prices to individual consumers, often without meaningful disclosure. While the FTC stopped short of recommending specific legislation, the report flagged groceries as a sector where the practice raised heightened concern because of the essential nature of the products involved.
Several state legislatures considered bills addressing algorithmic or dynamic pricing in 2025 and early 2026, though none focused as narrowly on groceries as SB 3732. The bill’s specificity may be a strategic choice: by limiting the scope to food, the proposal sidesteps the broader political fight over dynamic pricing in industries like travel and entertainment where consumers have more alternatives.
Enforcement challenges and unanswered questions
For all its specificity on what it bans, SB 3732 leaves significant questions about how violations would actually be caught and proven.
The bill does not spell out how regulators would detect algorithmic pricing in practice, especially when the systems run on back-end infrastructure invisible to consumers. Proving that two shoppers were shown different prices for the same item at the same time could require technical audits, data subpoenas, or cooperation from retailers and third-party platforms. New Jersey’s Division of Consumer Affairs has not published data on how many retailers currently use these pricing methods within the state, and the bill itself does not cite specific in-state violations or investigations.
Edge cases also remain unaddressed. Would targeted digital coupons sent to specific customers count as personalized pricing? What about limited-time flash sales available only through a store’s app? And how would regulators treat geographically tiered pricing that reflects real differences in rent, labor costs, and supply chain expenses between store locations?
As of May 2026, no committee assignment or hearing schedule for SB 3732 has appeared in the public record. The names of the bill’s sponsors have not been confirmed through publicly available sources. Whether the proposal has bipartisan support or faces organized industry opposition is unclear. No major grocery industry group has issued a public response to the bill. That silence could reflect the bill’s early stage, or it could signal that the industry is watching to see whether the proposal gains traction before engaging.
What SB 3732 signals for state-level pricing regulation
Even if SB 3732 never reaches a floor vote, its introduction reflects a shift in how state governments are thinking about the intersection of consumer data and everyday prices. New York’s attorney general has already demonstrated that existing consumer protection authority can pressure platforms into changing their behavior. The FTC’s 2024 report gave federal credibility to the concern. And advocacy groups have shown they can surface concrete evidence of the practice in action, turning what was once an abstract worry into a documented pattern.
For the people who buy groceries, which is to say nearly everyone, the underlying tension is straightforward. Food is not a product most people can choose to skip when the price feels unfair. If algorithms are quietly sorting customers into different price tiers for bread, milk, or eggs based on data those customers never knowingly shared, the question is no longer whether that is happening. It is whether state law should stop it, and whether a bill like SB 3732 can actually do the job.
David M. Keller is a finance writer based in Columbus, Ohio, covering personal finance and consumer-focused economic topics. He earned his degree in journalism from Ohio University and began his career reporting on local business and economic trends for a regional media outlet. Since then, he has contributed to a variety of online publications, focusing on clear, practical coverage of topics such as cost of living, debt, and everyday financial decision-making.
