Call Recording Laws by State: A 50-State Business Guide

This is a plain-English summary for orientation, not legal advice. Laws change and courts reinterpret them; check with counsel for your situation.

The short answer: federal law and most states let a business record a call it is part of (one-party consent). Ten states require every party’s consent for phone calls: California, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington. Connecticut, Delaware and Michigan are mixed. The practical rule for a business line is to announce the recording at the start of every call.

Every call your company records, whether a dispatcher picks it up or an AI receptionist does, sits under two layers of law: the federal rule, and the rule of the state the caller is in. Most states let you record a call you are part of without telling anyone. A smaller group requires everyone on the call to agree, and a few are genuinely unsettled. This page gives the rule for all 50 states and the District of Columbia with the statute behind each, explains which law applies when a customer calls from across a state line, and sets out what to change on your own lines.

One-party and all-party consent, in plain English

Under one-party consent, a call may be recorded when one person on it agrees, and your business, as a participant, counts as that person. Under all-party consent, often called two-party consent, every person on the call has to agree. The practical way to meet the stricter rule is a notice at the start of the call: in several of those states, a caller who hears the notice and stays on the line has been treated as agreeing. What counts differs by state, which is what the notes in the table are for.

The federal baseline

Federal law is a one-party rule. Under 18 U.S.C. § 2511(2)(d), a private person may record a call they are part of, or one where a participant has given prior consent, unless the recording is made to commit a criminal or tortious act. That rule applies nationwide, but it does not replace state law. Both can apply to the same call, so a recording that satisfies the federal rule can still break a stricter state rule.

Call recording laws by state: the full table

The consent rule below is what it takes to record a phone call you are on. Mixed means the answer depends on which statute you read or which court you ask. The table was built on September 11, 2026 from the state pages of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP) recording guide, with the contested rows also checked against the statute text, the court decision or a second compendium. On October 17, 2026, 27 of the 51 statutes were re-read on the state’s own code site (for Vermont, the federal code), and the notes column says only what those texts say. The other rows name the guide they were last checked against, because their state sites could not be read from our checker.

Each statute links to its text on the state’s official code or legislature site. The date in the last column is the most recent check that found the operative wording unchanged; where a state’s site could not be read, the row says which guide it was last checked against. The table is re-checked every month. Download the table as CSV. A summary for orientation, not legal advice.

Read the Mixed rows, and the Nevada and Vermont notes, as a warning rather than an answer. Michigan’s statute and its courts point different ways, Connecticut’s criminal and civil laws differ, Delaware has two statutes that conflict, Nevada’s rule comes from a court reading decided over dissents, and Vermont has no recording statute at all. If your service area touches one of them, the conservative choice is to handle it as all-party and ask a lawyer licensed there.

Which law applies when the caller is in another state

A plumber in Georgia, a one-party state, can take a call from a homeowner in Florida, an all-party state, without either of them thinking about it. Which state’s law governs that call is hard to say in advance, and courts decide it case by case. The conservative reading is to meet the stricter state’s rule.

California shows why. In Kearney v. Salomon Smith Barney (2006), the California Supreme Court applied California’s all-party rule to a brokerage that recorded calls from its Georgia office with clients in California without telling them. The court let the clients seek an order stopping the practice, though not damages for the recordings already made. Its reasoning was that California’s interest in its residents’ privacy would be seriously impaired if the one-party state’s law were applied instead.

An area code tells you little about where a caller is standing. Cell numbers travel with their owners, and a landlord in one state calls about a rental in another. That is the practical reason to stop guessing and announce on every call.

What this means in practice for your business

• Announce at the start of the call. Say the call may be recorded in the first words, before you take a name or an address. A notice given after the caller has described the problem comes after part of the recording was made.
• Keep the notice inside the recording. Connecticut’s civil statute accepts a verbal notice recorded at the beginning of the call, and Washington’s accepts a recorded announcement. A notice that is on the recording is one you can prove.
• Know what staying on the line means. Montana exempts a person who was warned, courts in Pennsylvania and New Hampshire have found consent where the caller knew about the recording, and Massachusetts bans only secret recording. Not every all-party state has said so, which is one more reason to make the notice plain.
• Have an answer for a caller who objects. Offer to continue without recording, or to call them back.
• Cover every line that records. The office phone, a tech’s cell that takes forwarded calls, a tracking number printed on a truck: if it records, it needs the notice.
• Never record for a bad purpose. The federal exception, and many state versions of it, fall away when the recording is made to commit a crime or a tort.

What the agent says about recording

Whenever recording is on, the DispatchLine agent says at the start of every call that the call may be recorded. It does this on every call, in every state, rather than guessing where the caller is. The announcement cannot be switched off on its own, and there is no silent mode: the only way to remove it is to turn recording off entirely.

If a caller says they do not want to be recorded, the agent cannot switch recording off for that one call; the caller can end the call and reach your office another way. Our call recording notice is the caller-facing version of these rules, and it treats continuing the call as consent. The rest of the script, from greeting to close, is covered in what the agent says, and how to change it.

Turning recording off

One setting in the portal turns recording off entirely. With it off there is no recording announcement, no audio and no transcript; callers still hear that the call is answered by an automated assistant. The agent still answers, triages, books and takes messages as before, including the emergency rules you set. If you are unsure about the law in your market, turning recording off is the safe fallback while you ask.

Storage and access

Recordings, transcripts and two-line summaries are stored privately, off the public web, for as long as your account is active. Audio is served only to signed-in members of your team, through links that expire. If you cancel, they are deleted within 30 days unless you export them first; exports today are the CSV call log and the audio download for any call. A caller who wants a recording deleted should contact your business, and we will help you with the request. Recordings and transcripts shows what the portal keeps for each call, and our privacy policy is the governing text on retention.

FAQ

Is it legal to record a customer call without telling them?

Under federal law and in most states, yes, if your business is on the call and the purpose is not criminal or tortious. In the all-party states, and arguably for callers located in them, no. Since you rarely know for certain where a caller is, the safe practice is to announce the recording at the start of every call.

What are the two-party consent states?

Two-party and all-party mean the same thing. For phone calls the list is California, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington. Three states are mixed: Delaware, where two statutes conflict; Connecticut, which requires all parties under its civil law; and Michigan, whose statute reads that way although courts have let participants record. Oregon requires every participant to be told only for in-person conversations.

Does a “this call may be recorded” message count as consent?

In several all-party states it does. Washington’s statute accepts a recorded announcement, Connecticut’s civil statute accepts a verbal notice recorded at the start, Montana exempts a person given a warning, and courts in Pennsylvania and New Hampshire have found consent where the caller knew about the recording. Not every state has said so; put the notice first and make it plain.

Which state’s law applies if a customer calls from another state?

It is not always settled, and courts decide it case by case. The conservative approach is to follow the stricter state. In 2006 the California Supreme Court applied California’s all-party rule to a Georgia firm’s calls with California clients, so a one-party home state is not a guaranteed defense.

Are calls to a cell phone treated differently?

In some states. California’s Penal Code § 632.7 requires everyone’s consent to record a call involving a cell or cordless phone, whether or not the conversation is confidential. Nevada’s supreme court applied its all-party phone rule to cellphone calls in 2015. In New Mexico and North Dakota the statutes name telephone lines, and courts have not said whether they reach cell calls.

Can I turn off the recording announcement and keep recording?

Not with DispatchLine. The announcement cannot be switched off on its own. If you do not want it, turn recording off in the portal: the announcement, the audio and the transcript all stop together, and the agent keeps answering and booking.

Sources

• The statute text on each state legislature or code site linked in the table above, read on the dates shown there; the same table as a CSV file is linked above it.
• Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Reporter’s Recording Guide, one page per state (every row): https://www.rcfp.org/reporters-recording-guide/
• 18 U.S.C. § 2511, Legal Information Institute: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2511
• Conn. Gen. Stat. § 52-570d, Connecticut General Assembly: https://www.cga.ct.gov/current/pub/chap_925.htm
• Del. Code tit. 11, § 1335, Delaware Code Online: https://delcode.delaware.gov/title11/c005/sc07/index.html
• Kearney v. Salomon Smith Barney (Cal. 2006): https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/ca-supreme-court/1099204.html
• Lane v. Allstate Insurance Co. (Nev. 1998): https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/nv-supreme-court/1091302.html
• Project Veritas v. Schmidt (9th Cir. 2025, en banc): https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2025/01/07/22-35271.pdf
• Wiretapping in a Wireless World, Vermont Law Review, vol. 43: https://lawreview.vermontlaw.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/vlaw_43n2_Clarisse.pdf
• Laws on Recording Conversations in All 50 States, Matthiesen, Wickert & Lehrer (updated February 2022): https://www.mwl-law.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/RECORDING-CONVERSATIONS-CHART.pdf
• Recording Phone Calls and Conversations, Digital Media Law Project: https://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/recording-phone-calls-and-conversations