Is Virginia a one-party consent state?

Va. Code § 19.2-62(B)(2), verbatim: "It shall not be a criminal offense under this chapter for a person to intercept a wire, electronic or oral communication, where such person is a party to the communication or one of the parties to the communication has given prior consent to such interception."

Wire, oral and electronic are covered, so in-person conversations as well as calls, and RCFP reports the same rule for text messages and wireless communications. An expectation of privacy is required on the oral branch: the protected category is "any oral communication uttered by a person exhibiting an expectation that such communication is not subject to interception".

One thing worth flagging. The text of § 19.2-62(B)(2) contains no criminal-or-tortious-purpose proviso, unlike the federal, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming analogues. Federal law applies independently, so such a purpose remains fatal under § 2511(2)(d) regardless. That reading of the state text comes from one source's rendering, so treat it as moderate confidence.

The Kilpatrick chart records "N/A" for Virginia in both its beep-notice and permitted-notice columns, meaning it found no authority on notice methods either.

A Class 6 felony under § 19.2-62(A). Disclosing the contents of an unlawfully intercepted communication is also a felony.

The private right of action carries the highest per-day rate in this survey. § 19.2-69 gives liquidated damages "computed at the rate of $400 a day for each day of violation or $4,000, whichever is higher", rising to $800 a day or $8,000 where the communication was privileged: attorney-client, doctor-patient, counselor-client, clergy-penitent, or between spouses. Punitive damages and reasonable fees and litigation costs on top. Good-faith reliance on a court order or legislative authorisation is a complete defence.

Being one of the people in the conversation answers the question for Virginia. It does not answer it for whoever is on the other end. No rule settles which state's law applies when the participants are in different places, more than one may apply at once, and courts have reached opposite results on comparable facts. If anyone on the call might be in an all-party state, the safe posture is theirs rather than yours. The general problem is on the US overview.

Nothing in Virginia law requires you to say anything, which is a different thing from it being a good idea. The reason to announce it anyway is the person on the other end of the call, who may be somewhere stricter, and the reason to ask rather than tell is that it puts an answer on the record instead of an assumption.

I'm recording this for notes, stored on my machine only. Any objection?

Then leave a beat. Longer versions, and what to do when someone says no, 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. In a one-party state that is legally unremarkable, and it is still the reason nobody in the room knows unless you say so.

The controls exist for when somebody would rather you didn't. A pause from the live edge releases the microphone and the system audio stream, so your operating system's own recording indicator goes dark and the person who asked can watch it happen rather than take your word for it. A meeting on a connected calendar can be marked never-record. 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 to reconcile against because there is no server.

None of that makes a recording lawful anywhere, and the audio never leaving your device is not an answer to a consent statute. It is a good answer to "where does this go", which is usually the question the room actually has.

• RCFP, Reporter's Recording Guide: Virginia
• Va. Code § 19.2-62
• Va. Code § 19.2-69
• Congressional Research Service R41733
• Kilpatrick 50-state wiretap chart, July 2024

• 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.