Recording consent laws by state: one-party and two-party consent states

The short version

• All-party consent for most private conversations (10): California, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Washington.
• All-party for some conversations (4): Connecticut (phone calls, civil liability), Michigan (the statute says all-party, but courts let participants record), Nevada (phone calls) and Oregon (in-person conversations).
• One-party consent (37, including D.C.): everywhere else, matching federal law.
• Safest everywhere: tell everyone you're recording and get their agreement, ideally on the recording.

Two terms to know. One-party consent means one person in the conversation must agree to the recording, and that person can be you. If you aren't part of the conversation, you need at least one participant's consent; otherwise it's eavesdropping almost everywhere. All-party consent (often called two-party consent, even when more people are present) means everyone in the conversation must agree.

Almost every state's rule, one-party or all-party, protects only private conversations: ones where people reasonably expect not to be overheard. A speech, a public meeting or a loud conversation in a restaurant usually isn't covered. Massachusetts is the big exception: it bans secret recording whether or not the conversation was private.

Recording consent laws for all 50 states and D.C.

Each row links to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP) state guide, a widely used summary written for journalists, and for all-party and mixed states, to the statute itself. "Civil suits" means the people recorded can sue for money.

Hidden-camera and voyeurism laws, which every state has, are separate and are only mentioned where they change the consent rule. Penalties and civil remedies are summarized; see the sources for amounts.

Federal law: 18 U.S.C. § 2511

The federal Wiretap Act is a one-party consent law. Section 2511(2)(d) says it is not unlawful for a private person to intercept a wire, oral or electronic communication "where such person is a party to the communication or where one of the parties to the communication has given prior consent," unless it is done "for the purpose of committing any criminal or tortious act." Breaking the law can mean up to five years in prison (§ 2511(4)), and the people recorded can sue (18 U.S.C. § 2520).

Federal law sets a floor, not a ceiling. States can be stricter, and the all-party states are. If you're in California, the fact that federal law allows one-party recording doesn't protect you from California's law.

Calls and meetings across state lines

When the people on a call are in different states, there's no single national rule for which state's law applies. Courts decide case by case, and they often side with the state that protects privacy more. The best-known example is Kearney v. Salomon Smith Barney, Inc., 39 Cal. 4th 95 (2006): a brokerage in Georgia (one-party) recorded calls with clients in California (all-party), and the California Supreme Court held that California's law applied to those calls going forward. Other courts have reached the opposite result on different facts, so the outcome isn't guaranteed either way.

The practical rule: if anyone on the call might be in an all-party state, act as if all-party consent applies. On a video meeting with people in several states, or people whose location you don't know, that means getting everyone's consent.

Video vs audio recording

Wiretap and eavesdropping laws are mostly about sound: the words people say. Silent video is usually governed instead by hidden-camera and voyeurism laws, which focus on private places like bathrooms and bedrooms. Courts don't all agree on the edges: in California, for example, one appeals court held silent video falls outside the eavesdropping law (People v. Drennan, 2000) while another applied it to recording without sound (People v. Gibbons, 1989). Georgia applies an all-party rule to secret video in private places and a one-party rule to sound.

Video with sound is treated as an audio recording for consent purposes. A screen recording of a video call captures everyone's voices, so the consent rules above apply.

Workplace meetings and video calls

Zoom, Teams and Google Meet

When you use the built-in recording in Zoom or Microsoft Teams, the app tells everyone in the meeting that it's being recorded. That notice helps, and in a state like Washington a clear, recorded announcement can count as consent. But continuing to sit in a meeting after a banner appears isn't automatically consent everywhere, and recordings made with other tools (screen recorders, phone apps, desktop recorders) show no notice at all. For step-by-step instructions, see our guides to recording a Zoom meeting and recording a Teams meeting.

Company policies

Even where the law allows recording, your employer may not. Many companies have policies that ban recording meetings without permission, and breaking them can cost you your job even if no law was broken. Those policies have limits too: the National Labor Relations Board has found that blanket no-recording rules can be unlawful when they stop employees from documenting working conditions together (Whole Foods Market, 2015), though the Board's standard for such rules has shifted over the years. HR teams should have a written recording policy that says who may record, how people are told, and where recordings are kept.

Customers, clients and interviews

Recording calls with customers in other states is where businesses most often get sued, especially under California's law, which lets each person recorded claim $5,000 per violation. The familiar "this call may be recorded" message exists for exactly this reason.

Consent scripts you can use

The simplest way to stay on the right side of every state's law is to ask, and to capture the answer on the recording. Adapt these to your situation.

If someone says no, stop recording or leave them out of it. A notice in an invitation is good practice but weaker than a clear "yes" at the start of the recording, because people don't always read invitations.

Where Hark fits

Hark is a desktop app that records meetings on your own computer and transcribes them there. It records your microphone and, on Windows and Linux, your computer's audio, so it works with Zoom, Teams, Meet or any other app. No bot joins the meeting, which also means nobody sees a "recording" notice unless you give one. Hark doesn't decide whether a recording is legal; you're still responsible for telling people and getting their consent, using a script like the ones above.

Other things that can make a recording illegal

• A criminal or harmful purpose. Federal law and many one-party states don't protect a recording made to commit a crime or a tort, such as blackmail.
• Sharing an illegal recording. Most wiretap laws make it a separate offense to use or disclose a recording you know was made illegally.
• Recording a conversation you're not in. Leaving a phone recording in a room after you leave is eavesdropping in almost every state.
• Private places. Recording in bathrooms, bedrooms and changing rooms is covered by separate hidden-camera laws.

For a plain-language overview of when recording someone is a crime and when it can get you sued, read is it illegal to record someone without their permission?

Sources and citations

Every row in the table was checked against the RCFP state guide linked in that row. For each all-party and mixed state we also read the current statute. Where RCFP's page is out of date (Oregon, after the 2025 en banc decision), we followed the newer source.

1. Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Reporter's Recording Guide (state-by-state pages, accessed October 2026).
2. 18 U.S.C. § 2511, Cornell Legal Information Institute; civil remedy at 18 U.S.C. § 2520.
3. Cal. Penal Code § 632, California Legislative Information; § 632.7, same source.
4. Conn. Gen. Stat. § 52-570d, Connecticut General Assembly.
5. 720 ILCS 5/14-2, Illinois General Assembly.
6. Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 272, § 99, Massachusetts Legislature.
7. Mich. Comp. Laws § 750.539c, Michigan Legislature.
8. Mont. Code Ann. § 45-8-213 (2025), Montana Legislature.
9. Or. Rev. Stat. § 165.540, Oregon State Legislature; Project Veritas v. Schmidt, 125 F.4th 929 (9th Cir. 2025) (en banc); certiorari denied, No. 24-1061 (Oct. 6, 2025).
10. Wash. Rev. Code § 9.73.030, Washington State Legislature.
11. Mo. Rev. Stat. § 542.402, Missouri Revisor of Statutes.
12. Statutes for Delaware, Florida, Maryland, Nevada, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania are linked in their table rows.
13. Kearney v. Salomon Smith Barney, Inc., 39 Cal. 4th 95 (2006).
14. Commonwealth v. Hyde, 434 Mass. 594 (2001); Project Veritas Action Fund v. Rollins (1st Cir. 2020), certiorari denied (2021); Glik v. Cunniffe, 655 F.3d 78 (1st Cir. 2011).

Spotted something out of date? Laws change, and we'd rather fix it than leave it wrong. Last reviewed October 2026.