Call recording laws by state

One-party and all-party consent

Federal law lets you record a call you are part of, or one where a participant has agreed, as long as it isn't for a criminal or harmful purpose (18 U.S.C. § 2511(2)(d)). Most states use the same one-party rule.

A minority of states go further and require the consent, or at least the knowledge, of everyone on the call. Several of them only protect conversations where people expect privacy, or only ban secret recording, which is why a clear announcement matters so much.

State by state

Recording a phone call you are part of. "All" means every party must consent or be told; see the notes for the details that matter.

Calls across state lines

There is no single rule. In Kearney v. Salomon Smith Barney (2006), the California Supreme Court held that California's all-party rule applies to calls with California residents recorded by a business in a one-party state, at least going forward. Courts in Pennsylvania and Florida have declined to apply their all-party laws to calls recorded outside their states.

Because you usually can't be sure where the other person is, the practical advice is to treat every recorded call as if an all-party state's law applies.

What counts as consent

In all-party states, a clear notice at the start of the call, before recording begins, is generally treated as consent when the caller stays on the line. The California Supreme Court put it this way in Kearney: a business that adequately advises all parties, at the outset of the conversation, of its intent to record would not violate the law.

Some states spell it out. Washington counts an announcement made "in any reasonably effective manner" and itself recorded (RCW 9.73.030). Connecticut accepts a recorded verbal notice at the beginning of the call (§ 52-570d). Massachusetts and Illinois only ban secret recording.

• Put the notice first, before anything else is said or recorded.
• A beep that starts a few seconds into the call is weaker. California's supreme court left open whether that was enough (Smith v. LoanMe, 2021).
• Record outbound calls the same way. On calls you place, you say it.

When a vendor or AI assistant records the call

Under California's Invasion of Privacy Act, a recording or AI vendor can be treated as a third party listening in, not just a tool, and the business that uses it can be sued alongside it. Claims have survived early motions to dismiss against Google's contact-center AI (2025), an AI phone-ordering assistant whose callers weren't told (2025), and Otter.ai (2026). The key question in these cases is whether the vendor could use call data for its own purposes, such as training its models.

None of these cases has reached a final ruling, and courts are split on the test. An Illinois federal court dismissed a similar federal claim against AI call transcription in January 2026 (Lisota v. Heartland Dental). Some lawyers advise that a generic "may be recorded" line may not be enough where an undisclosed vendor analyzes calls with AI.

A checklist for your business line

• Announce recording at the start of every recorded call, inbound and outbound.
• Make the notice the first thing the caller hears, before recording starts or as the first thing recorded.
• Ask your phone and AI vendors whether they use recordings or transcripts for anything besides serving you, such as training models, and get the answer in writing.
• Consider saying more than "may be recorded" when an AI assistant answers or analyzes the call, for example that calls are recorded and transcribed.
• Know where recordings are stored, who can reach them and how long they are kept. Pennsylvania's customer-service exception, for one, requires destroying them within a year.
• Follow your carriers' and IMO's policies, which may be stricter than state law.