Hunton Retail Law Resource

As retailers rapidly adopt AI across merchandising, labor, inventory, personalization, and supply chain operations, the legal, regulatory, and operational risks associated with these technologies are evolving just as quickly. Hunton helps retailers keep pace with confidence by delivering timely, practical legal analysis that enables clients to stay ahead of developments affecting the retail industry and the growing use of AI across retail operations.

To support this effort, Hunton has launched the interactive Enacted AI Law Tracker, an online resource designed to monitor state laws relevant to businesses that procure, deploy, or use artificial intelligence technologies.

On June 22, 2026, North Carolina Governor Josh Stein signed House Bill 315, the “Prohibit Litigation Investments Act” (the “Act”), into law, making North Carolina the first state to ban third-party litigation funding. 

Third-party litigation funding, which has become increasingly common in class actions and mass tort matters, generally involves a non-party investor providing capital to a plaintiff or law firm in exchange for a share of any recovery. Proponents argue that these arrangements can expand access to justice by helping claimants pursue meritorious claims, while critics have raised concerns about transparency, ethics, and the influence of non-parties over litigation strategy and outcomes. 

Retailers continue to deploy AI throughout their enterprises, with particular emphasis on enhancing operational productivity. One area where AI can improve operational efficiency is predictive inventory and logistics planning. Yet the technology is not without risk, and businesses should understand both the challenges associated with deploying AI and the ways they can mitigate supply chain and logistics disruptions through insurance and other forms of risk transfer when the technology fails to perform.

The NCAA’s eligibility rules have been facing growing antitrust pressure as athletes argue that limits on how long they can compete effectively limit how long they can earn from name, image, and likeness (“NIL”) opportunities and revenue-sharing income tied to Division I sports. Current NCAA Bylaw 12.6 allows Division I athletes five years to complete four seasons of competition, with exceptions tied to injuries, illnesses, transfers, and redshirt rules. Athletes are challenging those rules as anticompetitive under Section 1 of the Sherman Act.

Self-checkout has become a familiar feature in many retail stores, but it is also drawing increasing attention from state and local lawmakers. Several US states have proposed legislation to restrict self-checkout usage largely in response to theft and labor concerns. While no statewide bills have been signed into law, this is a trend retailers should watch closely.

Retail employers are navigating an immigration compliance environment that is becoming more complex at both the operational and strategic levels. Recent policy changes require employers to respond to shifting humanitarian-based work authorization categories, while proposed wage changes could reshape the economics of hiring and retaining professional foreign national talent. 

National advertising campaigns of old required multi-day model shoots, multi-camera video productions, and multi-disciplinary graphic creation. Generative AI advertising, however, has opened a new chapter in marketing ideation and production. For retailers in particular, these tools make it faster and cheaper to create digital ads, seasonal promotions, product images, and social media content—often without involving traditional agencies or creative teams. Even old commercials and brand stories, once thought to be merely corporate history, are getting new life and are being reimagined and repurposed. While the speed-to-market and costs perspective advantages of AI generated advertising are adulated by their developers, the risks—and who bears the responsibility for those risks—are often understated. 

Recent product liability cases against A.I. companies are applying traditional product liability theories to a new technology. In February 2026, the California Superior Court for San Francisco County entered an order coordinating twelve cases pending against defendant OpenAI. See In re: ChatGPT Prod. Liab. Cases, Cal.Super. Ct., JCCP No. 5431. Plaintiffs allege that OpenAI’s ChatGPT is unreasonably dangerous and caused psychological harm to plaintiffs or their family members by reinforcing delusional beliefs, endorsing suicidal ideation and providing information to decedents about how to harm themselves, and contributing to users’ psychological deterioration. 

The U.S. Department of Labor recently proposed a rule that would create a uniform standard for determining joint employer status under the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act, and the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act.  The proposed rule has significant implications for employers who share workers or rely on contractors, because a joint-employment finding may expand liability to multiple employers for wage-and-hour violations, leave obligations, and other statutory compliance issues.  The agency has said the proposed rule is intended to “reduce compliance and litigation costs, improve the Department’s ability to enforce the law, and help workers to better understand their rights and available remedies” while also promoting “greater uniformity in the analysis applied by courts.”

On March 12, 2026, we published a blog post discussing the implications of the U.S. Mint ceasing penny production and the various legal and tax implications for multistate businesses. As discussed, each state has legislative discretion on how to address these issues.