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AB 2564 cleared both chambers and then ran out the clock before the Assembly could concur, leaving California retailers with the personalized pricing rules they already had and a legislature that reconvenes December 7.
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The new dad in Catherine Blakespear's floor speech was searching for a baby thermometer late at night. The California senator's point was that the search and its timing tell a retailer how much urgency it is dealing with [11]. Her bill's opponents argued about something else entirely. The California Retailers Association said AB 2564 was overly broad and would put individualized discounts and rewards programs at risk [7], and Blakespear's reply was that companies "have offered discounts and sales and coupons for most of modern history without surveillance pricing" [12].
The retail case rests on a claim about who benefits, namely that personal data is often used to lower prices [5]. Polling by GBAO Strategies, distributed by the food and commercial workers' union, puts the share of Americans worried that surveillance pricing raises grocery costs at 68% and the share who think it is used to lower costs at 5% [14]. Subtract and the gap is 63 points; divide and it is roughly 13.6 worried people for every one who buys the discount story [17]. The polling, circulated by a union that opposes the practice, is less a measure of what pricing engines do than a measure of how a personalized price lands once a customer notices it [14].
The retailers' own statement concedes the harm. Rachel Michelin said consumers deserve protection from their personal information being used to charge them more, and that the legislature "can and should address that issue," while arguing the bill endangered discounts shoppers affirmatively choose [8]. Maryland, meanwhile, became the first state to ban the practice in April, in a law confined to grocery stores that activists called basically toothless [9], and most state bills have been drafted to exempt loyalty programs and senior discounts [10]. The fear about loyalty programs runs ahead of the statutory record, which shows most bills carving those programs out rather than targeting them.
For a pricing team, the useful sort has two axes. Provenance: did the customer hand you the data as part of a program they joined, or did you buy or infer it? Target: does the personalization move a discount off a reference price the customer can look up, or does it set the reference price they see? Volunteered data discounting a published price is the corner that has survived every version of these bills so far, Maryland's included [9][10]. The opposite corner, bought data setting a customized price that can be inflated and then artificially discounted, is precisely what Blakespear said her bill would have stopped [13].
The tradeoff in staying in the first corner is real, and worth saying out loud: a published reference price caps what you can extract from the shopper who would have paid more. What is cheap right now is writing down which corner each live feature sits in, while nobody is asking under oath. California's legislature returns December 7 and Newsom's term ends in early January [16], so a second attempt would land in front of a body that already passed this text once [1] and a governor who has never had to decide on it. Josh Hawley's description of the practice at last month's Senate Judiciary hearing as "one of the biggest scams in American history" [15] suggests the question is not waiting on Sacramento in any case.
Ranked by verification strength, evidence, and original report placement.
California Assembly Bill 2564, which would have restricted surveillance pricing, passed both the Assembly and the State Senate but failed to be sent back to the Assembly for a concurrence vote by the midnight deadline on the last day of the legislative session, according to KALW as reported by Gizmodo.
Had it met the deadline, AB 2564 would have headed to Gov. Gavin Newsom's desk.
AB 2564 is one of at least a dozen bills considered across the country this year to restrict surveillance pricing.
Surveillance pricing is the practice of using personal data acquired about customers to set prices that can be higher than prices paid by other people looking at the same product.
Retailers prefer the terms personalized pricing or bespoke pricing, arguing they will often use personal data to lower prices for consumers.
The FTC under President Biden used the term surveillance pricing; a study on the practice was killed by President Trump's FTC shortly after he took office for a second time in 2025, and Trump's FTC uses the term personalized pricing.
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Evidence-backed comparisons of source perspectives and observed adoption signals. Read the methodology
Which Builder, Operator, and Investor concerns the observed source mix emphasized—not a truth score.
Evidence, demonstrated adoption, hype gap, incentives, and confidence are assessed independently, each on its own current evidence. How these are measured.
One outlet, and it is quoting the radio
The fact that decides the story — a missed midnight concurrence vote — arrives secondhand: Gizmodo credits KALW, and no vote record, floor calendar, or legislative journal is cited anywhere. What is firsthand and strong is the argument: Michelin's statements were given directly to Gizmodo and Blakespear is quoted at length from the floor. So we are well evidenced on what the two camps said and weakly evidenced on what the chamber did.
One narrow law out of a dozen attempts
Count what has actually taken effect: Maryland, groceries only, loopholes its own supporters complain about. Everything else is motion — a dozen bills considered, a California measure that got within one vote of the governor and expired, a federal study cancelled. The practice being restricted is presumably widespread, but this reporting never documents a single retailer's use of it, so what we can measure is the spread of the rules, and the rules have barely spread.
Restrained on the outcome, borrowed on the mood
Gizmodo does not oversell the result — a bill that died is reported as a bill that died, and the piece is candid that the trade group wants to negotiate rather than bury it. The stretch is in the supporting cast: a poll paid attention to because a union that opposes the practice handed it over is used to establish what Americans think, and Hawley's 'biggest scams in American history' does rhetorical work that no cited finding backs. Small overstatement, and it comes from the sources rather than the framing.
Every number and quote has a payer
The trade association's statement exists to shape next session's draft. The polling exists because a union circulated it. Even the vocabulary is contested on purpose: retailers say bespoke pricing, one administration's FTC said surveillance pricing, the next one's says personalized pricing and cancelled the study that might have settled the matter. Gizmodo flags each of these affiliations, which is the right instinct, but it leaves a story in which no disinterested party is quoted at all.
Confident about the argument, not the mechanics
We would stand behind the shape of this dispute: the sides, their stated positions, the December 7 restart, the Maryland precedent. We would not yet stand behind the mechanics of the death — one relayed detail, no record, nobody named as responsible for letting the clock run — and a story that turns on a procedural lapse deserves better than that before anyone builds a forecast on it.