Guides
Is It Legal to Record a Conversation in Michigan?
Key facts
- ·Michigan’s eavesdropping statute criminalizes secretly recording private conversations without the consent of all parties thereto, but it does not apply to participants recording their own conversations.
- ·Homeowners and principal occupants may record inside their own residence for security without others’ consent, except for lewd or lascivious purposes.
- ·Recording in public places where the public has access is not restricted by Michigan’s eavesdropping or hidden-device laws because such places are excluded from the definition of "private place."
- ·Silent video-only recording in a private place is illegal under the hidden-device statute, but video recording in public spaces is permitted.
- ·Recording on-duty police performing public duties in public is lawful under Michigan’s statutes because such encounters occur in places excluded from the definition of "private place," though no published Sixth Circuit or Michigan Supreme Court decision has expressly recognized a constitutional right to do so.
- ·Breaking Michigan’s recording laws can lead to felony charges and civil lawsuits for damages, including possible destruction of recordings.
- ·Michigan currently has no biometric privacy law imposing consent requirements for voiceprints; pending bills would add breach-notification duties only if enacted.
Michigan's hybrid consent rule for private conversations
Michigan makes it a crime to secretly record any private conversation unless everyone involved agrees, but the law carves out an exception for participants. The statute says it’s illegal to "eavesdrop upon the private conversation of others without the consent of all parties thereto." This applies to in-person talks, phone calls, and electronic communications if the discussion is private. A "private conversation" is one where someone reasonably expects privacy, occurring in a "private place" as defined by statute: a location where one may reasonably expect to be safe from intrusion or surveillance, but expressly excluding "a place to which the public or substantial group of the public has access." If you’re part of the conversation, you can record it for yourself without breaking the law because the statute only punishes recording the "private discourse of others." But if you’re not part of the talk and you record it without everyone’s okay, you could face felony charges. Michigan courts have held that a participant in a private conversation may record it without "eavesdropping" because the conversation is not the "discourse of others," while a non-participant recording a private conversation without all-party consent does. This is why Michigan’s rule is classified as "hybrid" rather than a flat all-party consent rule.
Recording inside your own home for security
Michigan has a clear exception for homeowners and residents. The law states that the device-installation/recording prohibition in MCL 750.539d(1) "does not prohibit security monitoring in a residence if conducted by or at the direction of the owner or principal occupant of that residence, unless conducted for a lewd or lascivious purpose." This carve-out applies only to the people who live there or their immediate family and only inside that same dwelling. The carve-out applies only to the people who live there or their immediate family and only inside that same dwelling. There’s one limit: you can’t use the recording for a "lewd or lascivious purpose." Courts have applied this rule straightforwardly, treating it as an affirmative exception to the general prohibition on secret recording in private places. So if you’re in your own home, you can set up cameras or audio recorders without asking others for permission, unless you’re doing it for improper reasons.
Recording in public places where privacy isn’t expected
Michigan’s eavesdropping law only applies where people have a reasonable expectation of privacy. The statute defines a "private place" as somewhere you expect to be safe from intrusion, but it specifically excludes "a place to which the public or substantial group of the public has access." That means recording in public areas — like streets, parks, or store aisles open to shoppers — isn’t covered by the eavesdropping statute because such places are excluded from the definition of "private place." You can record conversations or video in these spaces without asking anyone’s permission, as the law treats these as open settings where privacy isn’t expected. This is a straightforward exemption built into the statutory definition of "private place."
Video-only recording in private vs. public spaces
Michigan treats silent video differently depending on where it’s taken. Recording video with no audio in a private place is illegal under the hidden-device law, even if you don’t capture sound, as the statute makes it a felony to "install, place, or use in any private place... any device for observing, recording, transmitting, photographing, or eavesdropping upon the sounds or events in that place," with no requirement that audio be captured. Courts have applied this rule to hidden cameras in homes and other private areas. But if you’re in a public place where the public has access, video recording (with or without audio) is allowed. The key is whether the location is "private" under the statute. If it is, video-only recording without consent is a crime. If it’s public, there’s no restriction from the eavesdropping or hidden-device laws.
Recording on-duty police in public
Michigan has no statute barring the recording of on-duty police officers performing public duties in public, and courts have interpreted the state’s privacy rules to exclude such encounters. The law only protects private conversations in places where people expect privacy. When officers are performing public duties in open areas, their speech isn’t considered a private conversation under the statute because such encounters occur in places excluded from the definition of "private place." However, Michigan is in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and the Sixth Circuit has NOT issued a published, binding decision recognizing a general public right to record police in public. The only on-point authority is an unpublished decision that does not set binding precedent. So while recording on-duty police in public is understood to be lawful in Michigan (no statutory bar, and outside the eavesdropping statute's "private place" scope), it rests on statutory silence/definitional exclusion plus persuasive-only case law rather than a definitive published Sixth Circuit or Michigan Supreme Court holding. A lawyer can tell you how this applies to your specific situation.
What happens if you break Michigan’s recording laws
Breaking Michigan’s eavesdropping or hidden-device laws is a felony. The law also provides a private right of action for victims, including the possibility of damages and an order to destroy any recordings made illegally. These consequences apply whether you’re an outsider recording a private conversation or someone using a hidden device in a private place. The law does not distinguish between intentional spying and knowing violations — the act itself is enough to trigger criminal and civil consequences. If you’re unsure whether a recording is legal, it’s safest to get consent or avoid recording altogether.
Exceptions and special rules for law enforcement and participants
Michigan’s eavesdropping statute includes an explicit exception for law-enforcement officers. MCL 750.539g(a) exempts "eavesdropping or surveillance... by a peace officer of this state or of the federal government, or the officer's agent, while in the performance of the officer's duties" from the Chapter's prohibitions. This exempts police conducting their own surveillance but does not restrict citizens from recording police. Separately, the statute’s definition of "eavesdrop" targets "to overhear, record, amplify or transmit any part of the private discourse of others without the permission of all persons engaged in the discourse," which Michigan courts have read to exclude participant recording from the scope of the eavesdropping prohibition. Sullivan v. Gray, 117 Mich. App. 476 (1982), holds that the statutory language "unambiguously excludes participant recording from the definition of eavesdropping by limiting the subject conversation to 'the private discourse of others.'" This means a participant in a private conversation may record it without "eavesdropping" because the conversation is not the "discourse of others," while a non-participant recorder generally needs all-party consent unless the conversation occurs in a public place.
Michigan’s evolving biometric privacy landscape
Michigan does not have a biometric privacy law like Illinois’ BIPA; the only enacted touchpoint is MCL 445.63(q) (Identity Theft Protection Act), which lists "biometrics" as one example within the definition of "personal identifying information" for breach-notification purposes only, not as a consent requirement. Two bills are pending but not enacted: SB 359 of 2025 ("Personal Data Privacy Act") remains stalled in the Senate Committee of the Whole since June 12, 2025, with no further action in over 13 months, while SB 360 of 2025 (an Identity Theft Protection Act amendment) passed the full Senate on August 26, 2025, and is currently before the House Committee on Government Operations. If enacted, SB 360 would amend the Act to expressly include "genetic information or biometric information that is used to authenticate or ascertain the individual's identity, such as a fingerprint, voice print, retina, or iris image" within the breach-notification-triggering definition of "personal information," but it would not impose a consent-before-collection requirement and would be enforced only by the Attorney General. Neither bill is law today, so Michigan currently imposes no voiceprint consent or retention requirements.
The full picture
Every layer of the law, not just the headline rule
Statute · Penalty: mixed
MCL 750.539c (Michigan Penal Code, Act 328 of 1931, "Eavesdropping upon private conversation"), read together with the definitions in MCL 750.539a, the video/photo-device provision in MCL 750.539d, the law-enforcement exception in MCL 750.539g, and the civil-remedies provision in MCL 750.539h. Current through PA 20 of 2026 per legislature.mi.gov (rendered July 15, 2026).
In-person vs. phone & video calls
The statute does not distinguish in-person conversations from telephone/electronic ones — MCL 750.539c applies broadly to any "private conversation" regardless of medium (both Sullivan v. Gray, 117 Mich. App. 476 (1982), and Fisher v. Perron, 30 F.4th 289 (6th Cir. 2022), applying the participant exception, were phone-call cases). MCL 750.539a(2) separately notes the eavesdropping definition does not modify laws governing interception of messages transmitted by "communications common carriers" (i.e., it doesn't displace federal wiretap-type common-carrier rules), but this is not a distinct consent standard for citizen recording.
Recording in public
Both the core eavesdropping definition (private "discourse"/"conversation") and the hidden-device statute turn on the statutory term "private place," which MCL 750.539a(1) expressly defines to EXCLUDE "a place to which the public or substantial group of the public has access." Michigan courts and commentators treat this as building a reasonable-expectation-of-privacy/public-place exception directly into the statute: if there is no reasonable expectation of privacy (e.g., a street dispute, a public sidewalk encounter with police), the recording is not "eavesdropping" under 750.539c and not covered by 750.539d's private-place restriction. I could not locate a squarely on-point, published Michigan appellate case applying this specifically to recording on-duty police in public (as opposed to Lewis v. LeGrow, which applied the "private place" concept to a bedroom); the public-place conclusion for police encounters is a straightforward application of the statutory definition and is consistently stated by secondary sources (RCFP, law-firm summaries) but I flag it as inferred rather than court-confirmed on facts identical to the police-recording scenario.
Recording at home
MCL 750.539d(2) contains an explicit residence carve-out: the device-installation/recording prohibition in 750.539d(1) "does not prohibit security monitoring in a residence if conducted by or at the direction of the owner or principal occupant of that residence, unless conducted for a lewd or lascivious purpose." So a resident (owner/principal occupant) may record/surveil (audio and video, per the device-based language) within their own home without the consent of others present, except for a lewd/lascivious purpose. There is no comparable blanket exception for recording in someone else's home or in other private spaces — those remain governed by the general "consent of the person entitled to privacy in that place" rule in 750.539d(1)(a). No separate statute imposes a stricter rule specifically for the recorder's own home; if anything the home carve-out is more permissive for the resident.
Recording the police
Michigan is in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Statutorily, MCL 750.539g(a) exempts "eavesdropping or surveillance... by a peace officer of this state or of the federal government, or the officer's agent, while in the performance of the officer's duties" from the Chapter's prohibitions — this exempts POLICE conducting their own surveillance; it is not a restriction on citizens recording police. No Michigan statute specifically bars citizens from recording on-duty police in public, and the general "private place"/reasonable-expectation-of-privacy framework in 750.539a/539c/539d means recording police performing public duties in public generally falls outside the eavesdropping statute's reach. On the First Amendment question: unlike the First, Third, Fifth, Seventh, Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits, the Sixth Circuit has NOT issued a published, binding decision recognizing a general public right to record police in public; the closest authority, Crawford v. Geiger, 656 F. App'x 190 (6th Cir. 2016), is unpublished/persuasive only. In a different context, the Sixth Circuit held in Hils v. Davis, 52 F.4th 997 (6th Cir. 2022), that police officers themselves have no First Amendment right to record their own misconduct-investigation interviews — not directly on point for a bystander/participant recording police in public, but shows the circuit has not embraced an expansive recording right. Net effect: recording on-duty police in public is understood to be lawful in Michigan (no statutory bar, and outside the eavesdropping statute's "private place" scope), but it rests on statutory silence/definitional exclusion plus persuasive-only case law rather than a definitive published Sixth Circuit or Michigan Supreme Court holding.
Video-only capture (no audio)
A silent video recording made in a "private place" (defined in MCL 750.539a(1) as somewhere one may reasonably expect safety from intrusion/surveillance, expressly EXCLUDING places to which the public has access) without the consent of the person entitled to privacy there is restricted — MCL 750.539d(1)(a) makes it a felony to "install, place, or use in any private place... any device for observing, recording, transmitting, photographing, or eavesdropping upon the sounds or events in that place," with no requirement that audio be captured (Lewis v. LeGrow, 258 Mich. App. 175 (2003), applied this to a video-only hidden-camera bedroom recording). However, because a "private place" by definition excludes places accessible to the public, video-only recording of incidents/disputes/police encounters occurring in public is NOT restricted by this statute. MCL 750.539c (the core audio-eavesdropping felony) targets "eavesdrop[ping]" defined as overhearing/recording/transmitting "private discourse" — silent video with no sound capture does not implicate 539c.
What counts as a “private” conversation →
Michigan's gate is a reasonable-expectation-of-privacy test built directly into the statutory text, not a free-standing multi-factor judicial test. Primary text (independently pulled via direct fetch of the official Michigan Legislature PDFs, both the standalone 750.539a excerpt and the full Chapter LXXXII PDF — text confirmed verbatim, "Michigan Compiled Laws Complete Through PA 20 of 2026"): - MCL 750.539a(1): "'Private place' means a place where one may reasonably expect to be safe from casual or hostile intrusion or surveillance but does not include a place to which the public or substantial group of the public has access." - MCL 750.539a(2): "'Eavesdrop' or 'eavesdropping' means to overhear, record, amplify or transmit any part of the private discourse of others without the permission of all persons engaged in the discourse." - MCL 750.539c: "Any person who is present or who is not present during a private conversation and who wilfully uses any device to eavesdrop upon the conversation without the consent of all parties thereto, or who knowingly aids, employs or procures another person to do the same in violation of this section, is guilty of a felony..." The statute never defines "private conversation" directly — it defines "private place" and "eavesdrop"/"private discourse." Michigan courts have read the "private conversation" gate through those two definitions using a reasonable-expectation-of-privacy standard. Lewis v. LeGrow, 258 Mich. App. 175 (2003) (case text fetched directly via FindLaw) quotes the Michigan Supreme Court's People v. Stone, 463 Mich. 558, 563, 621 N.W.2d 702 (2001), as the source of this standard: the Legislature's definition of "private place" "intended 'that private places are places where a person can reasonably expect privacy,'" while cautioning that this reading "flowed from the language the Legislature used, not Fourth Amendment jurisprudence," and that whether a person can reasonably expect privacy in a conversation "generally will present a question of fact." Stone's own citation was independently confirmed as real via CourtListener's opinion index (People v. Stone, 463 Mich. 558, 621 N.W.2d 702, decided Jan. 30, 2001) — but CourtListener's opinion page itself is gated behind an AWS WAF bot-challenge that neither I nor, apparently, the original researcher could get past this session, so Stone's own opinion text still rests on Lewis's quotation of it (primary-adjacent) plus RCFP's secondary corroboration, not a direct read of Stone itself. That specific hedge in the original analysis is accurate and should stay. Separately from that "is this conversation private at all" gate, there is a second, independent statutory gate on WHO can violate the statute: because "eavesdrop" is limited to the "private discourse of OTHERS," a participant recording their own conversation is categorically outside the definition (a definitional exclusion, not a consent-based exception). Lewis v. LeGrow states this as: a participant in a private conversation may record it without "eavesdropping" because the conversation is not the "discourse of others" (verbatim, confirmed by direct fetch — this corrects an earlier draft that paraphrased this as "without violating the eavesdropping statute," which is not Lewis's actual wording). This is reinforced by Sullivan v. Gray, 117 Mich. App. 476 (1982) (quoted via Varnum Law's summary, independently fetched): "We believe the statutory language, on its face, unambiguously excludes participant recording from the definition of eavesdropping by limiting the subject conversation to 'the private discourse of others.'" Notably, the Michigan Supreme Court has never itself ratified this participant exception on the merits: I directly fetched the Michigan Supreme Court's own orders in the case (docket 162121, courts.michigan.gov) and confirmed that it was the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan — not the Sixth Circuit, as an earlier draft of this analysis incorrectly stated — that certified the question in AFT Michigan v. Project Veritas (No. 4:17-cv-13292 (E.D. Mich.)); the Michigan Supreme Court's May 26, 2021 order states "the question certified by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan is considered, and the Court respectfully declines the request to answer the certified question," with Justice Bernstein noting he "would answer the certified question." That leaves ~40 years of Court of Appeals precedent (Sullivan, Lewis) as the only authority for the participant exception. So the "who can violate it" gate rests on Court of Appeals precedent the state's highest court has pointedly declined to endorse or reject (at the district court's own request, not on appeal from the Sixth Circuit), while the "is it private at all" gate traces (per Lewis's own citation) to actual Michigan Supreme Court authority (Stone). A recorded exchange must first qualify as a "private conversation" — occurring where/under circumstances in which a participant has a reasonable expectation of privacy, per the Michigan Supreme Court's People v. Stone (463 Mich. 558, 621 N.W.2d 702 (2001), as cited in Lewis v. LeGrow), which is textually anchored to MCL 750.539a(1)'s "private place" definition excluding places with public access — before MCL 750.539c's eavesdropping prohibition applies at all; if that threshold is cleared, the statute is written as an all-party-consent rule on its face ("without the consent of all parties thereto"), but Sullivan v. Gray and Lewis v. LeGrow hold that a PARTICIPANT recording their own conversation cannot be "eavesdropping" in the first place (since the definition reaches only the "discourse of others"), so in practice a participant needs no one's consent while a non-participant/third-party recorder needs the consent of all parties — and if the conversation never clears the private-conversation/reasonable-expectation-of-privacy gate to begin with, no one (participant or third party) needs anyone's consent, full stop. This is verified as an accurate description of Michigan's classification as "hybrid" in the existing dataset row — it matches that row's own verification note that "750.539c is textually all-party consent, but judicially narrowed (Sullivan/Fisher) to function as one-party consent for participants while remaining all-party consent for non-participant recorders."
None enacted. Michigan has no BIPA-style biometric privacy statute and no enacted comprehensive consumer privacy law. The sole enacted touchpoint is MCL 445.63(q) (Identity Theft Protection Act), which lists "biometrics" as one example within the definition of "personal identifying information" — confirmed by direct fetch of the official statute text, which reads in relevant part: "'Personal identifying information' means a name, number, or other information that is used for the purpose of identifying a specific person or providing access to a person's financial accounts, including, but not limited to, a person's name, address, ... automated or electronic signature, biometrics, stock or other security certificate or account number, credit card number, vital record, or medical records or information." That definition serves the Act's identity-theft-crime/breach-notification provisions, not a consent/notice/retention regime for collecting biometric identifiers. Two bills are pending (neither enacted): (1) SB 359 of 2025 ("Personal Data Privacy Act") — independently re-verified live on 2026-07-22 via the official Legislature bill-history page: last action remains "REPORTED FAVORABLY WITHOUT AMENDMENT" / "REFERRED TO COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE," both dated 6/12/2025, with no further Senate or House action in the 13+ months since — i.e., stalled in the Senate, not enacted. (2) SB 360 of 2025 (an Identity Theft Protection Act amendment) — NOT flagged by the original researcher, found during independent verification — which would amend MCL 445.63 to explicitly add "genetic information or biometric information that is used to authenticate or ascertain the individual's identity, such as a fingerprint, voice print, retina, or iris image" to the triggering definition of "personal information" for data-breach-notification purposes. This bill has advanced further than SB 359: it passed the full Senate 19-15 on 8/26/2025 (Roll Call #212) and was received/read/referred to the House Committee on Government Operations the same day, where it has sat without further action through 2026-07-22. SB 360's enforcement (new Secs. 20, 20a-20c) is Attorney-General-only (assurance of discontinuance, investigative demand, AG-initiated civil action/civil fines) — confirmed by direct fetch of the bill text; no private-right-of-action language appears anywhere in it. Neither bill is law today. — None imposed by current Michigan statute for collecting/processing a voiceprint. MCL 445.63(q) only confirms "biometrics" counts as "personal identifying information" for the Identity Theft Protection Act's identity-theft-crime definitions and (via the separate "personal information" definition used for breach notification) related database-breach duties — it does not require written consent, advance notice, a public retention/destruction schedule, or any precondition before an entity captures a voiceprint. Two pending bills would change this if enacted, but neither is law: SB 359 would (per the pattern of enacted comprehensive laws like Virginia/Colorado/Connecticut) likely classify biometric data as "sensitive data" requiring opt-in consent, AG-enforced only; it has been stalled in the Senate for 13+ months. SB 360 is more concrete and more advanced (already passed the Senate, now in the House): it would amend the ITPA's "personal information" definition to expressly include "genetic information or biometric information that is used to authenticate or ascertain the individual's identity, such as a fingerprint, voice print, retina, or iris image" — meaning a voiceprint used to authenticate identity would trigger the Act's breach-notification duties (not a consent-before-collection requirement) if a database holding it is breached. This is not current law and should not be relied on for present-day compliance design; both bills should be monitored, with SB 360 the one closer to passage.
Attorney ethics (ABA Formal Op. 01-422) →
The State Bar of Michigan's Committee on Professional and Judicial Ethics addressed this squarely in Opinion RI-309 (May 12, 1998) — notably three years before the ABA issued Formal Opinion 01-422. RI-309 expressly overruled the Committee's own prior opinion, CI-200, which had treated undisclosed recording by a lawyer as a blanket ethical violation, and it also rejected the reasoning of the older ABA Formal Opinion 337 (1974) as "overly broad." The operative holding, quoted from the syllabus: "Whether a lawyer may ethically record a conversation without the consent or prior knowledge of the parties involved is situation specific, not unethical per se, and must be determined on a case by case basis." So Michigan does NOT treat undisclosed recording as automatically/per-se unethical (rejecting the old Formal Opinion 337 rule) — but it also does not adopt a flat "always permissible" rule the way a pure "follows 01-422" state might be framed. Instead it sets a fact-specific, case-by-case standard: the lawyer's conduct must be evaluated under MRPC 8.4(b) (conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation, or that reflects adversely on fitness to practice) and MRPC 4.4 (prohibiting use of means that have no substantial purpose other than to embarrass, delay, or burden a third person, or that violate the legal rights of others). A recording made for a legitimate purpose (e.g., to preserve an accurate record) is not per se improper; one made to entrap, harass, or that is accompanied by an actual misrepresentation (e.g., lying when directly asked if the call is being recorded) would run afoul of these rules. The opinion also explicitly conditions the analysis on legality: it notes lawyers must be mindful of Michigan's eavesdropping/wiretap statutes (MCL 750.539 et seq.), and relies on the fact that Michigan is a one-party-consent state (citing Sullivan v. Gray, 117 Mich. App. 476 (1982)) as part of why recording one's own conversation is not inherently wrongful. In substance, RI-309's ultimate conclusion (not per se unethical) lines up with where the ABA would land in 2001's Formal Opinion 01-422, but because Michigan frames it explicitly as an individualized, fact-specific "case by case" inquiry under 4.4/8.4(b) rather than a general presumption of propriety, this is best classified as a middle-ground/case-by-case position rather than a straightforward adoption of 01-422 (which Michigan predates and does not cite). This classification is independently corroborated by live.law's own internal ABA 01-422 reference memo (legal/recording-ethics-aba-01-422.md), which — working directly from the footnotes of the 2001 ABA opinion itself — places Michigan/RI-309 in a distinct "case-by-case / no per se rule" category, expressly separate from the bucket of states (e.g., Oklahoma, Utah, Maine, D.C.) that "rejected the old blanket prohibition outright." No later Michigan State Bar opinion or Michigan Supreme Court decision was found revisiting or superseding RI-309 in light of 01-422, despite an additional round of targeted searching.
Can you personally sue over a violation?
Yes — this state gives a private right of action, not just criminal/regulatory enforcement.
Sources
- https://www.legislature.mi.gov/documents/mcl/pdf/MCL-750-539A.pdf (official MCL 750.539a text, primary)
- https://www.legislature.mi.gov/documents/mcl/pdf/mcl-328-1931-LXXXII.pdf (official MCL Chapter LXXXII text including 750.539b through 750.539l, primary)
- https://www.legislature.mi.gov/Laws/MCL?objectName=mcl-750-539c (Michigan Legislature site, primary — cert error blocked direct fetch but content confirmed via official PDF above)
- https://law.justia.com/cases/michigan/court-of-appeals-published/1982/57301.html (Sullivan v. Gray, 117 Mich. App. 476 (1982) — used as lead only; statutory holding cross-checked against official statute text)
- https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/1579962/sullivan-v-gray/ (Sullivan v. Gray case text)
- https://www.butzel.com/alert-the-u-s-sixth-circuit-court-of-appeals-affirms (summary of Fisher v. Perron, 30 F.4th 289 (6th Cir. 2022) — used as lead; case is a published Sixth Circuit opinion)
- https://www.varnumlaw.com/insights/is-there-still-a-participant-exception-to-michigans-eavesdropping-statute/ (background on 2021 Michigan Supreme Court declination to answer certified question in AFT Michigan v. Project Veritas)
- https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/mi-court-of-appeals/1261492.html (Lewis v. LeGrow, 258 Mich. App. 175 (2003) — used as lead only)
- https://www.rcfp.org/reporters-recording-guide/michigan/ (secondary aggregator, used only as a lead, not as sole source for any reported fact)
Common situations
Specific questions people actually ask
Can I record as a guest in someone else's home?
Michigan treats this cautiously: any home-recording leeway it gives is written for your own home, not one you're just visiting. As a guest, expect to need everyone's okay before recording, the same as anywhere else in the state.
Read the full explainer →What if I'm on a call with someone in another state?
Play it safe: if either state on the call requires everyone's okay to record, treat the whole call that way — don't assume Michigan's rule is the only one that matters just because you're the one wearing the glasses.
Read the full explainer →If it's legal to record, can it still be used against me later?
Usually, yes. Being legal to record and being protected from a future court case are two different questions — a legal recording can generally still be obtained by the other side later. That's especially true the moment a third person is present or on the line — even one extra listener can be enough to strip away legal protection here. Recording your own conversation with your own attorney is a separate, more protected situation, but almost everything else — a landlord, a police officer, a family member — isn't automatically off-limits to opposing counsel just because it was legal to capture.
This is a newer, less-settled corner of the law — our own research is still being refined here, so treat this as a starting point, not a final answer.
Read the full explainer →Frequently asked questions
Can I record a conversation with my boss in a closed office if I’m part of it?
Yes. Because you are a participant in the conversation, your recording is not "eavesdropping" under the statute, which targets the "private discourse of others."
Is it legal to record a meeting in a restaurant booth if the door is closed?
It depends on whether the booth is in a "private place" as defined by statute: a place where one may reasonably expect to be safe from intrusion or surveillance but excludes places to which the public or substantial group of the public has access. If the booth is in a public area of the restaurant where the public has access, it may not be considered a private conversation. But if it’s a quiet corner where privacy is expected and the public does not have access, you would need everyone’s consent to record.
Can I use a hidden camera in my Airbnb rental to record my guests?
No. The home-recording exception in MCL 750.539d(2) applies only to the owner or principal occupant of a residence recording inside that residence, not to rentals like Airbnbs.
What’s the penalty for recording someone without consent in Michigan?
It’s a felony. The person you recorded could also sue you for damages, and a court could order destruction of the recording.
Can I record a police officer arresting someone in a public park?
Yes. Public encounters with police where the officer is performing official duties in an open area are not considered private conversations under Michigan’s statute because such encounters occur in places excluded from the definition of "private place." However, Michigan’s federal appeals court has not issued a published, binding decision on this specific issue, so the safest approach is to record openly and avoid confrontation.
Does Michigan have a law about recording someone’s voice for biometric data?
No. Michigan does not have a biometric privacy law like Illinois’ BIPA; the only enacted touchpoint is MCL 445.63(q) (Identity Theft Protection Act), which lists "biometrics" as one example within the definition of "personal identifying information" for breach-notification purposes only, not as a consent requirement. Two bills are pending but not enacted: SB 359 of 2025 remains stalled in the Senate Committee of the Whole since June 12, 2025, while SB 360 of 2025 passed the full Senate on August 26, 2025, and is currently before the House Committee on Government Operations. If enacted, SB 360 would add breach-notification duties for certain biometric data but would not impose a consent-before-collection requirement.
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