Can you record or transcribe a meeting in California?

At a glance

What section 632 says

It covers anybody who, intentionally and without the consent of all parties to a confidential communication, uses an electronic amplifying or recording device to eavesdrop on it or record it, whether the people are together in a room or talking by phone or another device. Being one of the parties does not make it lawful: the consent required is everybody’s. People call California a two-party consent state, but the statute says all parties.

A confidential communication is one carried on in circumstances that reasonably indicate a party wants it “confined to the parties thereto”. It excludes a public gathering, a proceeding open to the public, and any circumstance in which the parties “may reasonably expect that the communication may be overheard or recorded”. The California Supreme Court’s test, in Flanagan v. Flanagan, is whether a party has “an objectively reasonable expectation that the conversation is not being overheard or recorded”, which is decided on the facts of each conversation.

Calls with a mobile or cordless phone

Section 632.7 requires the consent of all parties to record a communication between two mobile phones, a mobile phone and a landline, or with a cordless phone, and it has no confidentiality test. The California Supreme Court held in Smith v. LoanMe that “section 632.7 applies to parties as well as nonparties”. Whether audio carried over the internet by Zoom, Teams or Meet counts is not settled, and somebody dialling in from a mobile phone makes the section more plainly relevant.

Does transcribing count as recording?

Treat it as if it does. Section 632 covers eavesdropping as well as recording, and as far as we found, no California appeal court has decided whether live speech-to-text that keeps no audio is either. Federal law defines intercepting a call as acquiring its contents with a device, with or without a recording.

California also has no rule, as Washington does, that an announcement on its own counts as everybody’s consent. Telling people goes to whether they agreed, and to whether anybody could reasonably expect not to be recorded, which is judged on the facts. Ask, and stop if somebody says no.

The penalties

Under section 632 the penalty is a fine of up to $2,500 per violation, imprisonment in a county jail for up to a year or in state prison, or both, and up to $10,000 per violation for somebody convicted before. What is recorded in breach of it is not admissible as evidence, except to prove the breach.

Under section 637.2, anybody injured by a breach can sue for the greater of $5,000 per violation or three times their actual damages, and the statute says “It is not a necessary prerequisite to an action pursuant to this section that the plaintiff has suffered, or be threatened with, actual damages.” How violations are counted, per call or per person, is argued case by case.

Federal law, and calls across state lines

Federal law allows a person who is a party to a call, or has a party’s prior consent, to intercept it, unless the purpose is “committing any criminal or tortious act”. That is a floor, not a ceiling: California’s stricter rule still applies to a call with somebody in California.

When the people on a call are in different states, courts have applied the law of the state where the recording device is and of the state where the person recorded is. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press advises assuming the stricter law applies.

What to do in practice

None of this is a substitute for advice on a particular case, but these steps follow from the statutes above:

• Say at the start of the call that it is being recorded or transcribed, by what and why, and ask everybody to agree.
• Put the same in the invitation, so that people joining late, or by phone, have been told.
• If somebody objects, stop recording or transcribing, or end the call.
• Take particular care with calls about health, money, employment or legal matters, and with people outside your organisation.
• Keep the recording or transcript only as long as you need it.

Using Troopa in California

Troopa keeps the transcript and the notes, not the audio, and keeps no voiceprint. It runs on your computer and shows the other people on the call nothing unless you present its window, so telling them is up to you, and in many places the law requires it. Keeping no audio is a privacy choice, not an exemption from the law: ask before Troopa listens in.

An organisation in the United States can choose the US region, where its meetings are stored in Northern Virginia. We do not use your meetings to train or improve AI models, ours or anybody else’s.

Questions

Sources

1. California Penal Code § 632: eavesdropping on or recording confidential communications
2. Flanagan v. Flanagan (2002) 27 Cal.4th 766, Supreme Court of California
3. California Penal Code § 632.7: recording calls on mobile and cordless phones
4. Smith v. LoanMe, Inc. (2021) 11 Cal.5th 183, Supreme Court of California
5. California Penal Code § 637.2: the civil action and damages
6. 18 U.S.C. § 2511: interception, and the one-party exception in (2)(d)
7. 18 U.S.C. § 2510: definitions, including “intercept”
8. Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Reporter’s Recording Guide (2021)

Read on 6 October 2026, by the people who make Troopa. Spotted something out of date? Tell us and we will correct it and say when.