Your Client’s Prices Are Set by an Algorithm: State Surveillance Pricing Bans, Common Pricing Algorithm Laws, and the FTC’s New Personalized Pricing Framework

This session examines the antitrust track of the new pricing-algorithm laws and how they change the analysis for any business that shares data with, or takes recommendations from, a pricing vendor. Attorneys will study California AB 325, effective January 1, 2026, including its definition of a “common pricing algorithm,” its prohibition on coercing others to adopt recommended prices, its modified pleading standard for conspiracy claims, and the exposure it creates for both software vendors and their subscribers; Connecticut’s residential rent-setting ban under HB 8002, its “revenue management device” definition, and its exemptions for aggregated data reports and affordable-housing programs; and New Jersey’s FAIR Act, which supplements the state antitrust statute with prohibitions on parallel pricing coordination and coordinating functions effective July 1, 2027. The session then turns to the Department of Justice’s November 2025 RealPage settlement terms, limits on nonpublic competitor data in real-time recommendations, the twelve-month aging rule for training data, the end of market surveys, and the requirement that auto-accept features remain optional and overridable, and explains how counsel can use those terms as a compliance blueprint for clients in multifamily housing, hospitality, retail, and any other sector where a shared pricing tool is in use.

This session addresses the consumer protection track: laws that restrict or require disclosure of prices set using a consumer’s personal data. Attorneys will compare the four enacted state regimes, New York’s Algorithmic Pricing Disclosure Act under General Business Law § 349-a, in force since November 10, 2025; Maryland’s Protection from Predatory Pricing Act, effective October 1, 2026, with its focus on large food retailers and delivery platforms, its 45-day cure period, and its lack of a private right of action; New Jersey’s Fair Price Protection Act, effective August 1, 2027, with its grocery-focused ban, its once-per-24-hours rule for cost-based price changes, its electronic shelf label moratorium beginning February 1, 2027, and its Consumer Fraud Act treble damages; and Connecticut’s Public Act 26-130, effective July 1, 2027, with its outright ban for retail sellers and its mandatory “THIS PRICE WAS INCREASED USING YOUR PERSONAL DATA” notice for others, and will map the exemptions for loyalty programs, bona fide discounts, subscriptions, and cost-based differences that determine whether a client’s pricing model survives. The session then examines the Federal Trade Commission’s proposed Enforcement Policy Statement on Personalized Pricing of August 19, 2026, its consumer-expectations theory of deception, its treatment of undisclosed data collection as an independent Section 5 concern, and the disclosure standard the Commission says would dispel a deceptive impression, along with the California and New York attorney general sweeps already underway. Attorneys will leave with a counseling roadmap: how to inventory a client’s pricing tools and data inputs, draft compliant disclosures and loyalty-program terms, structure privacy policies and vendor agreements, and prepare for the surveillance pricing bills advancing in New York, Illinois, and Pennsylvania.