Digital shelf labels are supposed to save shoppers money. A new NJ law says they could do the opposite—and put a one-year freeze on them

At a Walmart Supercenter in North Bergen, New Jersey, just across the Hudson River from Manhattan, Victor Lopez, 21, tapped the screen of his work-issued smartphone.

Under a field labeled “Enter new price,” he punched in $10 for a bottle of barbeque sauce.

If it had worked, Lopez, a team leader, would have almost tripled the price of the item with a click of a button.

But it didn’t, and that’s not due to some human or technical error.

It was the whole point of the demonstration: to show that store associates are not able to use electronic shelf labels (ESLs) to raise prices arbitrarily.

“We cannot take prices up in the store,” Kyle Boyd, store manager of the supercenter, where about 90% of tags have been replaced with ESLs, told Retail Brew during a tour of the facility last month.

“We can only take prices down in the store.” The willingness to promote some pricing practices—as well as touting what it is characterizing as a technical stopgap in place to prevent price hikes at the store level—comes as Walmart faces political pushback that could determine the future of electronic shelf labels.

With lawmakers increasingly tying the technology to controversial pricing practices, the retail giant is making the case that ESLs won’t fundamentally change how prices are set.

Using or abusing: In July, New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill signed the Fair Price Protection Act into law to protect consumers from “discriminatory surveillance pricing”—which it defines as using personal data to set prices t —and placing a one-year moratorium on new ESLs while the state studies the effects of the tech.

Critics of the legislation argue that digital price tags are simply a tool for saving time and cutting costs, while supporters of the law argue they make it easier for retailers to manipulate and raise prices.

This debate is now playing out on a national level.

Maryland passed a similar law earlier this year, and legislation is pending in several other states.

A r ecent report from the Groundwork Collaborative, Consumer Reports, and More Perfect Union also claimed that Instacart’s AI pricing tool offers individualized prices on the same items.

In response, companies and industry groups are eager to distance ESLs from unpopular pricing practices like surveillance pricing, dynamic pricing, and other labels such as surge pricing, which conjure images of skyrocketing airline or concert tickets.