Is Oregon a one-party consent state?

Phone: one-party. ORS 165.540(1)(a) reaches only a person obtaining a telecommunication "to which such person is not a participant", and even then permits it where "consent is given by at least one participant". A participant recording their own call is outside the prohibition.

In person: an all-party notice requirement. ORS 165.540(1)(c) bars obtaining a conversation by device "if not all participants in the conversation are specifically informed that their conversation is being obtained".

And the definition is unusually broad for a meeting transcriber. ORS 165.535(1) defines "conversation" as the transmission between two or more persons of an oral communication which is not a telecommunication or radio communication, "and includes a communication occurring through a video conferencing program". The en banc Ninth Circuit described the statute as prohibiting unannounced audio-only recordings and the audio portion of audiovisual recordings, while not addressing video-only recordings or photographs.

There is no expectation-of-privacy element. The dissent's objection in the Ninth Circuit case was precisely that the law bans taping conversations where there is no reasonable expectation of privacy.

This is the best-developed notice authority in the country, and it comes to three points.

The phrase is undefined by statute and the case law is thin. The en banc court said so directly: "The statute does not define 'specifically informed,' and because prosecutions pursuant to section 165.540(1)(c) are very infrequent, caselaw on this point is sparse at best."

Verbal notice suffices, and it need not use the word recording. In State v. Haase, 895 P.2d 813 (Or. Ct. App. 1995), a defendant was told he "was being monitored by audio means"; the court held that warning reasonably informed him the conversation was being obtained, so there was no violation. The test is substance, not magic words.

A statutory exception covers announced meetings. ORS 165.540(6) exempts recordings of public and semipublic meetings, classes and educational activities, and "private meetings where all participants knew recording was occurring".

No Oregon authority was found on whether a beep or a written calendar-invite notice satisfies the requirement, so treat those as unsettled and say it out loud.

RCFP's Oregon page is out of date, and wrong in the direction that would get a reader in trouble. It reports that the Ninth Circuit struck down the in-person requirement in Project Veritas v. Schmidt, 72 F.4th 1043 (9th Cir. 2023), and that recording public in-person conversations is now broadly permitted.

That panel decision was reheard en banc, and on 7 January 2025 the en banc Ninth Circuit upheld ORS 165.540(1)(c) as content-neutral and satisfying intermediate scrutiny. The notice requirement is in force. Do not rely on RCFP's reading of this one.

A Class A misdemeanor under ORS 165.540(9).

The private right of action is unclear, and the sources disagree. RCFP states that under ORS 133.739 an injured party recovers the greater of actual damages, $100 a day, or $1,000, plus punitive damages and fees. Those amounts are correct as against ORS 133.739's text, but that statute's own scoping language reaches only communications intercepted in violation of ORS 133.724 or 133.737, the court-ordered-interception provisions, not ORS 165.540. Whether a § 165.540(1)(c) violation carries any civil remedy could not be confirmed.

No rule settles which state's law applies to a conversation spanning two of them, several may apply at once, and courts have reached opposite results on comparable facts. If anyone in the meeting is in Oregon, the practical answer is to satisfy Oregon. The general problem is on the US overview.

Oregon wants everyone informed, not everyone agreeing, and Haase says the words do not have to be exact. So the sentence only has to reach every participant and convey what is happening.

Before we start: this conversation is being recorded and transcribed for my notes. It runs on my own laptop and nothing is uploaded.

Make sure it reaches everyone, including anyone dialling in late. Longer versions are on telling people you're recording.

Earkeep records continuously and announces itself to nobody: no bot in the participant list, no banner on anyone else's screen. Where every participant's agreement is what makes the recording lawful, that means the whole of the obligation sits on you saying something, and the app will not remind you.

What it gives you is somewhere to go when the answer is no. A pause from the live edge releases the microphone and the system audio stream, so your operating system's own recording indicator goes dark in front of the person who asked. A meeting on a connected calendar can be marked never-record, so a standing meeting is decided once. And a stretch of the day, or a saved meeting with its transcript, can be purged: the lines come out of the file on your own disk and nothing is written in their place, with no server copy anywhere. The one caveat is that it is not recoverable either.

None of that makes a recording lawful in Oregon. Consent law is about the recording, not about where it is stored, so the fact that transcription runs on your own device and the audio is never written to disk is not an answer to the statute. It is an answer to a different and often more pressing question in the room.

• Project Veritas v. Schmidt, en banc (9th Cir., 7 January 2025)
• ORS 165.540
• ORS 133.739
• Snell & Wilmer, on the en banc decision
• RCFP, Reporter's Recording Guide: Oregon
Out of date on Project Veritas.

• US recording laws, state by state: the federal baseline, the cross-border problem, and all 51 jurisdictions.
• Telling people you're recording: the scripts, and the three ways to stop.
• Private by design: why the audio never leaves your computer.

This page is legal information, not legal advice. It summarises statutes and cases rather than replacing them, and we are not lawyers. If the answer matters, ask someone who can be held to their answer.