A Consumer Reports-led coalition on Oct. 22 formally urged Gov. Kathy Hochul to sign New York’s One Fair Price Act before her Dec. 31 deadline, and to tighten it through a chapter amendment that would close what the group calls a geolocation loophole and narrow the carve-out for past-purchase data. EPIC, the Center for Democracy and Technology, Groundwork Collaborative, and TechEquity Action signed on.

The bill (S.8623-B/A.9349-B), passed by the Legislature in June, amends GBL § 349A to bar merchants from using purchase history, browsing history, real-time location, income, or inferred household size to set an individual shopper’s price. Wilson Sonsini’s reading pegs civil penalties at up to $5,000 for a first violation and up to $20,000 for each subsequent one, enforced through Attorney General Letitia James’s office after the private right of action was stripped in negotiations.

The carve-outs are the real story for small operators. Loyalty programs, coupons, subscribe-and-save, and veteran and senior discounts survive. Algorithmic personalization that reads a visitor’s device, location, or cart history doesn’t. Any e-commerce stack that quietly tunes prices to the shopper is suddenly on the wrong side of the statute.

Industry pushback is sharp but narrow. Chamber of Progress argues the bill “treats a discount and a surcharge as the same offense,” a framing designed to collapse the coalition’s distinction between rewarding declared loyalty and exploiting inferred desperation.

Two further AI bills, a training-data transparency measure and the Stop Deepfakes Act, also sit on Hochul’s desk, per TrustArc. The sequencing echoes New Jersey’s parallel AI marketing disclosure push: state attorneys general, not federal regulators, are drawing the operative lines on how small businesses are allowed to price and pitch online.

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