We build a recording app. We are not lawyers, and this page is a plain-English summary of widely reported rules, not a legal opinion. Statutes change, courts reinterpret them, and the facts of your situation matter enormously. If a recording could end up in a courtroom, an HR file, or a published story, talk to a lawyer in the relevant state first. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press maintains the most reliable free state-by-state guide.
Key findings
- Federal law is one-party consent. 18 U.S.C. 2511 permits recording where at least one participant consents, and you can be that participant.
- Twelve states require all-party consent: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington.
- Two of those twelve are split. Connecticut and Oregon apply different rules to phone calls than to in-person conversations.
- Recording a conversation you are not part of is illegal everywhere, in one-party and all-party states alike. That is eavesdropping, not recording.
- Lawful does not mean allowed. Workplace policy, court rules and platform terms can all prohibit a recording that no statute forbids.
The single most useful thing to understand about US recording law is that the default is permissive. Most people assume they need everyone's permission. In most of the country, for a conversation you are actually part of, you do not.
The exceptions matter a great deal though, and they are concentrated in some very populous states. California, Florida, Illinois and Pennsylvania between them hold something like a quarter of the US population, and all four require everyone's consent.
The federal baseline
The federal Wiretap Act, part of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, sits at 18 U.S.C. 2511. It sets a one-party consent rule: intercepting a communication is lawful where one of the parties to it has consented.
You can be that party. If you are in the conversation and you decide to record it, your own consent satisfies the federal requirement.
States are free to be stricter, and twelve of them are. No state can be more permissive than the federal floor, which is why there is no such thing as a zero-party consent state.
The twelve all-party consent states
"Two-party consent" is the phrase everyone uses, and it is slightly wrong. The requirement is all-party consent. In a six-person meeting you need six yeses, not two.
| State | In-person conversation | Phone call | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| California | All parties | All parties | Applies to confidential communications |
| Connecticut | One party | All parties | Split. Criminal statute differs from the civil rule |
| Delaware | All parties | All parties | Statute and case law have diverged historically |
| Florida | All parties | All parties | Strictly enforced |
| Illinois | All parties | All parties | Eavesdropping statute rewritten after being struck down |
| Maryland | All parties | All parties | The Linda Tripp state, strictly enforced |
| Massachusetts | All parties | All parties | Unusually strict, bans secret recording specifically |
| Montana | All parties | All parties | Requires notice rather than explicit consent in some cases |
| New Hampshire | All parties | All parties | |
| Oregon | All parties | One party | Split. In-person is stricter than electronic |
| Pennsylvania | All parties | All parties | Strictly enforced |
| Washington | All parties | All parties | Consent must generally be recorded on the recording itself |
Everywhere else follows one-party consent, which is the remaining 38 states plus the District of Columbia. If you are in the conversation, you can record it.
The two split states
Connecticut and Oregon are the ones that catch people, because the rule depends on the medium rather than the state alone.
Connecticut requires all-party consent for recording telephone calls, but its criminal eavesdropping statute follows one-party consent for in-person conversations. So the same person, in the same room, can be governed by two different rules depending on whether the conversation happens face to face or over the phone.
Oregon runs the opposite way. In-person oral communications require all-party consent. Electronic communications, including phone calls, follow one-party consent. Oregon is one of the few places where recording an in-person meeting is harder than recording a call.
If you are in either state, the medium is the question to ask first.
Michigan and Nevada
These two show up on some lists and not others, and you should treat both as unsettled.
Michigan's statute reads like an all-party rule, but courts have interpreted it as permitting a participant to record their own conversation. Different sources therefore classify Michigan differently in good faith.
Nevada has a similar history of statutory text and judicial interpretation pointing in different directions, particularly between in-person and telephone recordings.
The practical answer in both: assume you need everyone's consent. The cost of asking is a mildly awkward sentence. The cost of being wrong is a criminal statute.
Record the room, keep the audio
Voxxli records in-person meetings, lectures and interviews on your iPhone and transcribes them using Apple's on-device speech engine. The audio file never leaves the device. No account, nothing to sign up for.
When people are in different states
This is the genuinely hard case and there is no clean answer. A call between someone in Texas, which is one-party, and someone in California, which is all-party, could be analysed under either state's law. Courts have variously applied the law of the recorder's location, the law of the recorded person's location, and the law of the state where the person recorded had a reasonable expectation of privacy.
Follow the strictest rule in play. If anyone on the call is in an all-party state, ask everyone. This is not legal caution for its own sake, it is that the alternative requires you to correctly predict a choice-of-law analysis, and you will not.
Remote meetings make this the normal case rather than the edge case. A six-person video call can easily span four states and two of the twelve.
Five traps
- Eavesdropping is not recording. Leaving a phone running to capture a conversation you are not part of is illegal in every state, one-party ones included. One-party consent means a party consents. If you are not in the conversation, there is nobody to consent.
- Lawful is not the same as permitted. Your employer's policy, a court's rules, a school's code of conduct and a platform's terms of service can each prohibit a recording that no statute touches. People get fired over recordings that were entirely legal.
- Consent has to be informed. A mumbled aside as you press record is weak. In Washington, consent generally needs to be captured on the recording itself, which is a good habit everywhere: start recording, then ask, and keep the yes in the file.
- Expectation of privacy still matters. Some all-party statutes only bite where the conversation was private. A loud argument in a public square is a different analysis from the same words in a closed office.
- The rules for video and for minors differ. Audio and video are often governed by separate statutes, and recording minors introduces its own requirements. Neither is covered here.
What to actually do
For almost everyone recording their own meetings, lectures or interviews, the workable habit is short:
- Start the recording first, then ask. "I'm recording this so I don't have to take notes, everyone okay with that?" Now the consent is in the file.
- If anyone present is in one of the twelve, treat it as all-party regardless of where you are.
- If someone says no, stop. Obviously, but also: a recording made over an objection is worthless as evidence and radioactive as a document.
- Keep the audio somewhere you control. A recording of a sensitive conversation sitting in a vendor's cloud is a subpoena target and a breach target. This is the part we have opinions about, and we have written separately on where the major transcription tools actually send your audio.
The asking takes four seconds and removes essentially all of the risk. Almost nobody says no.
Questions people actually ask
Which states require all-party consent to record a conversation?
Twelve are commonly listed: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Washington. Connecticut and Oregon are split between phone and in-person rules. Michigan and Nevada are frequently described as ambiguous and are safest treated as all-party.
Is it legal to record a conversation you are part of?
In most of the US, yes. Federal law at 18 U.S.C. 2511 permits recording where at least one participant consents, and you can be that participant. Thirty-eight states and DC follow the same rule. The twelve all-party states do not.
Which law applies if the people on a call are in different states?
Unsettled, and it depends on the case. Courts have applied the recorder's state law, the recorded party's state law, and the law of the state where the person had an expectation of privacy. Follow the strictest rule among all participants' locations.
Can your employer record meetings without telling you?
State consent law applies to employers like anyone else, so in a one-party state an employer who is party to the conversation generally can. Separately, workplace policies often prohibit recording regardless of the law, and the National Labor Relations Act may protect some recording tied to concerted activity. That last area is genuinely contested.
Is it illegal to record a conversation you are not part of?
Yes, essentially everywhere, including one-party consent states. That is eavesdropping rather than recording. One-party consent means one party consents, and if you are not in the conversation there is no consent available to give.