Proposed 'One Fair Price Act' Bans Dynamic Pricing Based on Your Data, Sets $3,000 Payout for Violations

The proposed One Fair Price Act of 2025 aims to hit the brakes on a practice many of us have noticed: dynamic or personalized pricing. Essentially, this bill makes it illegal for a business to charge you a different price than someone else for the same product or service if that difference is based on, informed by, or uses “surveillance data”—which the bill defines broadly as information about your personal traits, behavior, or biometrics. The goal is simple: stop companies from using the data they collect on you (where you shop, what you click, your browsing history) to figure out the maximum price they can squeeze out of your wallet.

The Algorithm Stops Here: What’s Off-Limits

This legislation targets the digital ghost following you around the internet. If you’ve ever cleared your cookies, switched browsers, or used a VPN just to check if a flight price would drop, this bill is for you. Section 2 explicitly prohibits using your personal information—your online behavior, income bracket data, or even your location—to decide whether you pay $100 or $150 for the exact same item. If a company is caught using your digital footprint to hike up the price, they’re breaking the law. This applies to almost everything, from buying a new appliance online to booking a hotel room.

However, the bill provides some necessary exceptions. Price differences are still okay if they are based on reasonable costs (like shipping to a remote area) or if they are bona fide discounts offered uniformly to a broad group, such as students, seniors, or military veterans. Loyalty programs are also fine, as long as the points or credits required for a product are the same for every member. Companies using these exceptions must clearly disclose the basis for the price difference or the eligibility for the discount before you buy. The big carve-outs here are the insurance industry and credit products, which are completely exempt from this entire pricing prohibition.

New Teeth for Enforcement: $3,000 Per Violation

This bill doesn’t just rely on federal regulators; it gives serious enforcement power to individuals and states. First, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) gets expanded authority to enforce this rule, even over entities normally outside its jurisdiction, like air carriers and non-profits. Second, State Attorneys General can sue violators on behalf of their citizens. Most significantly, you, the consumer, get a private right of action—meaning you can sue directly if you’re harmed by a violation. The damages are the greater of your actual monetary loss or a statutory penalty of $3,000 per violation.

This private right of action is a huge deal because it lowers the bar for legal action. If you can show that two people were offered different prices for the same product, or that you were offered different prices depending on how you viewed the product (say, on your phone vs. your laptop), that creates a presumption that the law was broken. Companies then have to prove the price difference wasn’t based on surveillance data. To ensure people can actually use this power, the bill also voids any pre-dispute arbitration agreements or waivers of class action rights related to these claims. This makes it much easier for consumers to challenge large companies in court.

Air Travel and the Cost of Compliance

Air travel gets a specific mention in Section 3, which clarifies that airlines and ticket agents are also banned from using surveillance data for differential pricing. This is a big win for travelers who often feel like they’re being tracked and penalized for searching for flights. However, for businesses, especially those that rely heavily on dynamic pricing algorithms—think e-commerce platforms and major retailers—the compliance costs will be high. They will need to audit their entire pricing structure to ensure no surveillance data is influencing the final price presented to any customer.

There’s also the question of the $3,000 penalty. While it’s designed to deter companies, this significant statutory damage award, combined with the low threshold for establishing a violation, could lead to a surge in litigation. The bill also mandates a study by the Small Business Administration within a year to see how this new pricing mandate affects small businesses, acknowledging that the compliance burden might hit them hardest compared to large corporations.