US Recording Consent Checker

How the Consent Rules Actually Work

The familiar labels are “one-party consent” and “two-party consent,” and as shorthand they hold up: in most states, a person who is part of a conversation may record it without telling anyone, while in a minority of states everyone being recorded has a say. But the shorthand hides the four patterns the statutes actually use.

One-party consent is the majority rule and the federal baseline: your own consent, as a participant, is all the law requires. Some states put a participant entirely outside the offence (Alaska, Victoria-style drafting in South Dakota); most write an express exception. Nearly all of them revoke the protection if the recording is made for a criminal or tortious purpose, and several — Iowa, New Jersey, Ohio, Wisconsin, North Dakota, DC — go further, revoking it for any “injurious” purpose.

All-party consent states — California, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Washington — require agreement from everyone recorded. What counts as agreement varies: Washington’s statute deems consent obtained when one party announces the recording in a reasonably effective manner and the announcement is captured in the recording; Maryland and Illinois treat continued participation after a clear announcement as implied consent; Pennsylvania courts read “prior consent” strictly and a notification banner alone likely fails.

Knowledge and announcement states sit between the two. Montana prohibits hidden-device recording without all parties’ knowledge — but any party can cure that by announcing the recording out loud, and nobody gets a veto. Massachusetts bans secret recording rather than unconsented recording: an openly visible recorder is lawful, hiding the same device is a felony.

Hybrid and unresolved states are where the binary labels genuinely mislead. Nevada requires all-party consent for phone calls (a judicial construction from Lane v. Allstate that runs against the statute’s literal text) but only one-party consent in person. Oregon runs the opposite split: phone and video are one-party, in-person conversations require everyone to be specifically informed. Connecticut is one-party criminally but exposes a participant to civil liability for recording a call without all-party notification. Delaware has two statutes that flatly contradict each other and no court has resolved which controls. The checker handles each of these per medium rather than forcing them into a single label.

Interstate Calls: Whose Law Applies?

The single most asked question in this area: you are in a one-party state, the other party is in an all-party state — whose rule governs? The honest answer is that no national rule exists, and the leading authority points in the strict direction. In Kearney v. Salomon Smith Barney (2006) 39 Cal.4th 95, a Georgia office recorded calls with California clients — lawful under Georgia’s one-party rule. The California Supreme Court held California’s all-party statute applies to a call that takes place partly in California, and applied California law. Courts elsewhere have gone different ways (some look to where the recording device sat), which is exactly why the safe rule on an interstate call is to follow the strictest state involved.

Other courts have used different anchors. New Hampshire’s supreme court requires the recording device to be located in-state before its statute applies; Nevada’s holds interceptions occur where the recording is made. A federal court in Texas applied Texas law over California’s to a Texas-based recorder. None of that inconsistency helps a person deciding whether to press record, which is why this tool defaults to the safest rule: on an interstate call, follow the strictest state involved. The cost of over-complying is a sentence of notice; the cost of guessing wrong ranges up to a felony charge and statutory damages.

All 50 States + DC

“All parties must be informed” marks the announcement states, where telling everyone satisfies the law without needing their agreement. “Unresolved — treat as all-party” marks Delaware’s conflicting statutes and Missouri’s unsettled in-person rule, where the strict reading is the only safe one.

Video Meetings and AI Notetakers

Video meetings follow the phone-call rules almost everywhere: a Zoom, Teams, or Google Meet session is a wire or electronic communication under statutes written for telephones, and courts have had no trouble applying them. The one genuine exception is Oregon, whose statute contains an express video-conferencing carve-out putting platform recordings under the one-party rule even though in-person Oregon conversations require all-party notice.

AI notetakers — Otter.ai, Fireflies, Zoom AI Companion, Microsoft Copilot — add two questions on top. The first is consent mechanics: in one-party states, a participant who activates the tool generally supplies the consent the statute requires, with the recurring exception of auto-join, where a bot records a meeting its owner never attends and no consenting party is present. In all-party states, no tool is compliant by default, and several state pages flag that a bot’s name in the attendee list is not consent. The second question is the vendor itself: pending litigation (the Otter.ai privacy class action, and the “capability test” from Ambriz v. Google) asks whether an AI vendor that independently processes meeting audio for its own purposes — such as model training — is a separate, unauthorized interceptor even when a participant activated the tool. Illinois layers its Biometric Information Privacy Act on top: deriving voiceprints for speaker identification requires written consent, separately from the recording. The per-state answers live in our AI meeting recording laws by state cluster, which this checker links for both states in your result.

What This Tool Does Not Do

This checker states the rule each statute creates for the situation you selected. It does not, and cannot, tell you whether a specific recording of yours is lawful. That depends on facts a lookup tool has no way to assess: whether the conversation carried a reasonable expectation of privacy, exactly how consent or notice was given, where each device sat, what you intend to do with the recording, and whether a purpose carve-out applies. Workplaces, courtrooms, prisons, and family-law matters carry additional rules beyond the general statutes, and a recording that is legal to make can still be inadmissible — or, in Virginia’s civil courts, presumptively excluded — when you try to use it. When the stakes are real, read the state page linked in your result and consult a lawyer licensed in that state.

This tool summarises the recording-consent statutes and controlling case law of the 50 states and the District of Columbia as at August 19, 2026, drawn from RecordingLaw.com’s state-by-state guides. It is general legal information, not legal advice, and does not assess the facts of your specific recording. RecordingLaw.com is not a law firm and is not affiliated with any government body. Consult a lawyer licensed in the relevant state before you record, or before you rely on a recording you already have.