1. United States
2. Iowa
3. Letter

Right now, a family in my community is paying up to 23% more for groceries than a wealthier shopper buying the exact same items — not because of location, not because of supply, but because an algorithm decided they had no choice. That is not a market. That is a rigged game. Companies like Instacart, Amazon, Uber, and RealPage are deploying AI surveillance pricing systems that quietly charge working people more based on their browsing history, zip code, device type, and shopping patterns. These are proxies for race, income, and ethnicity. The Department of Justice already settled a case where an algorithm charged higher prices to customers in predominantly minority zip codes. The FTC confirmed in 2025 that corporations are using personal demographic data to set different prices for identical goods. Wealthy consumers, with options and mobility, can shop around. Working families, locked into one grocery store or one rideshare app, cannot. The algorithm knows that — and exploits it. This is a regressive tax disguised as technology. And it is already illegal. Federal civil rights law prohibits practices with discriminatory effect regardless of intent. These systems fail that standard. Yet Congress has stalled on the Stop AI Price Gouging Act, the One Fair Price Act, and the AI Civil Rights Act — while corporations build these systems at scale, in secret, with zero accountability. Your constituents expect action. I am demanding you co-sponsor legislation requiring mandatory public auditing of pricing algorithms for discriminatory impact, and establishing a private right of action for consumers harmed by these practices. Anything less is a choice to let corporations pick our pockets by the color of our zip code. This is not complicated. Charging poor people more for the same goods is wrong. Make it unambiguously, federally, and permanently illegal.