Recording Law for Recording at Home in Arkansas

Arkansas law allows you to record an audio conversation if you are a party to it or if at least one participant has given prior consent. This is set out in Ark. Code Ann. § 5-60-120(a), which provides: "It is unlawful for a person to intercept a wire, landline, oral, telephonic communication, or wireless communication, and to record or possess a recording of the communication unless the person is a party to the communication or one (1) of the parties to the communication has given prior consent to the interception and recording." The statute applies uniformly to all covered communications—whether in-person, over the phone, or via electronic means—and contains no location-based exceptions. Because the rule is framed around party consent rather than the setting, there is no special exception for recordings made inside your own home; the one-party-consent test is the only requirement.

Arkansas’s statute covers any spoken exchange between people—referred to in the law as an "oral communication"—as well as wire, landline, telephonic, and wireless communications. The law contains no requirement that the conversation be private or confidential, nor does it matter whether the exchange is loud, occurs in a public place, or is clearly audible to bystanders. Arkansas courts have applied the one-party-consent rule directly to recorded phone calls without adding any privacy-expectation test. The three Arkansas Supreme Court cases interpreting this statute—Elliott v. State, 335 Ark. 387 (1998); Lewis v. State, 336 Ark. 469 (1999); and King v. State, 2019 Ark. 114—apply the statute’s plain language without screening for whether the speakers expected privacy.

The only Arkansas law that specifically restricts covert recording is the video voyeurism statute, Ark. Code Ann. § 5-16-101. This law makes it a crime to secretly record another person in a private area where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy—such as a bathroom, bedroom, or changing area—without their knowledge or consent. Violations are a Class D felony for a first or second offense and a Class C felony for a third offense or if the victim is under 14. The statute targets covert, intimate recordings and is unlikely to be implicated by ordinary conversations or disputes unless the recording involves secretly filming someone undressing or in a private space.

Recording without consent in Arkansas is a Class A misdemeanor under Ark. Code Ann. § 5-60-120(b). A conviction can lead to up to one year in jail and fines. Even if you are not criminally charged, an illegally recorded conversation could be excluded from evidence in court, though Arkansas’s exclusionary rule applies only to government actions—not to recordings made by private individuals. The three Arkansas Supreme Court cases that construe § 5-60-120—Elliott v. State, 335 Ark. 387 (1998); Lewis v. State, 336 Ark. 469 (1999); and King v. State, 2019 Ark. 114—hold that an unlawfully obtained private recording remains admissible despite the statutory violation.

Arkansas has a separate law, Ark. Code Ann. § 21-1-106, that protects your right to record police officers performing their duties in public places or on private property where you are lawfully present. The statute bars officers from prohibiting recording unless one of a few narrow exceptions applies, such as a risk to physical safety or interference with police work. However, the Eighth Circuit has not recognized a clearly established First Amendment right to record on-duty police, as shown in Molina v. City of St. Louis, 59 F.4th 334 (8th Cir. 2023), where the panel granted officers qualified immunity because such a right was not "clearly established." The Arkansas statute provides stronger protection than the unsettled federal constitutional landscape, but recording should still avoid interference, safety risks, or obstruction to stay within the statute’s exceptions.

Imagine you are having an argument with a coworker in your office. You start recording on your phone to document what is said. Under Arkansas law, this is legal because you are a party to the conversation. If you later share the recording to support your position, that is also allowed. The only exception would be if you secretly recorded the coworker in a bathroom or other private area without consent—that would violate the video voyeurism law. If the coworker later sues or reports you, the recording remains admissible in court because Arkansas’s exclusionary rule does not apply to private recordings, as held in Elliott v. State, 335 Ark. 387 (1998); Lewis v. State, 336 Ark. 469 (1999); and King v. State, 2019 Ark. 114.

Unlike states such as California or Washington, Arkansas does not treat loud or obviously public conversations as automatically outside the one-party-consent rule. Because the statute contains no privacy-expectation or public-place gate, a conversation that is loud or occurs in a public setting still requires either that you are a party to it or that at least one participant has consented to being recorded. Arkansas courts have never added such a screening test, and the state’s Supreme Court has applied the one-party-consent rule directly to recorded phone calls without considering whether the speakers expected privacy, as shown in Elliott v. State, 335 Ark. 387 (1998); Lewis v. State, 336 Ark. 469 (1999); and King v. State, 2019 Ark. 114.