Recording Law for Recording at Home in Michigan

Michigan has a clear exception for recording inside your own home. Under state law, a resident, owner, or immediate family member may install, place, or use any device to observe or record sounds or events inside their own home without the consent of others present. The only exception is if the recording is done for a lewd or lascivious purpose. This rule comes from MCL 750.539d(2), which specifically carves out home security monitoring from the general ban on hidden devices in private places. The exception applies to residents, owners, or immediate family members recording inside their own home; silent video-only recordings made by such individuals in their own home are covered by this carve-out and are not separately governed by the broader private-place restriction in MCL 750.539d(1)(a). The law treats your own home as a private space where you have the right to monitor what happens, as long as you're not using the recording for improper purposes.

If you're not recording in your own home, Michigan's eavesdropping law applies. Recording in someone else's private home, a hotel room, a private office, or any other private space where you don't have the right to monitor requires the consent of the person entitled to privacy in that place. This is because Michigan law defines a "private place" as somewhere you can reasonably expect privacy, and it prohibits installing or using any device to observe or record sounds or events in such places without consent. The law turns on whether the space is one where people have a reasonable expectation of privacy, not on guest status or ownership. If you're unsure whether a space counts as private, assume you need consent unless you're the resident or owner.

Michigan's eavesdropping law only applies to "private conversations" that occur where people have a reasonable expectation of privacy. The law defines a "private place" as somewhere you can reasonably expect to be safe from intrusion or surveillance, but it explicitly excludes places to which the public or a substantial group has access. A conversation in a public park, on a sidewalk, or in a store open to customers would not be considered private. Only conversations in places like your own home, a private office, or a hotel room where you expect privacy fall under the law's protections. Michigan courts have read the reasonable-expectation-of-privacy standard into the statute through Lewis v. LeGrow, 258 Mich. App. 175 (2003), which quotes the Michigan Supreme Court's People v. Stone, 463 Mich. 558, 621 N.W.2d 702 (2001), as the source of this standard.

Michigan's law treats participants and non-participants differently. A participant in a conversation can record it without violating the eavesdropping statute, because the law only prohibits recording the "private discourse of others." This means if you're part of the conversation, you can record it without telling the other person. Non-participants, however, must get consent from everyone in the conversation to legally record it. This distinction comes from Michigan Court of Appeals decisions like Sullivan v. Gray, 117 Mich. App. 476 (1982), and Lewis v. LeGrow, 258 Mich. App. 175 (2003), which interpreted the law this way. The Michigan Supreme Court has not ruled directly on this issue; in AFT Michigan v. Project Veritas, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan certified a question to the Michigan Supreme Court, which declined to answer it on May 26, 2021, leaving Court of Appeals precedent as the only authority.

Michigan law specifically addresses silent video recordings in private homes through its "private place" definition and the hidden-device prohibition. Under MCL 750.539d(1)(a), it's a crime to install or use a device to observe or record sounds or events in a private place without consent. However, the home exception in MCL 750.539d(2) allows residents, owners, or immediate family members to record inside their own homes without consent, as long as it's not for a lewd or lascivious purpose. A Michigan Court of Appeals case, Lewis v. LeGrow, 258 Mich. App. 175 (2003), applied this law to a hidden-camera recording in a bedroom, confirming that video-only recordings in private homes are covered by the home exception when made by a resident, owner, or immediate family member. The exception does not create a separate video-only carve-out; it operates through the resident/owner/family-member status and the statutory definition of "private place."

Imagine you're staying at an Airbnb for a week. One night, your host shows up unannounced and starts arguing with you in the living room of the rental. You pull out your phone and start recording the argument to document what's happening. Under Michigan law, this recording is legal only if you are the resident or owner of the rental unit, because the home exception in MCL 750.539d(2) applies only to residents, owners, or immediate family members recording inside their own home. If you are not the resident or owner, recording without the host's consent would violate the law because the rental unit is not your own home and the statutory exception does not extend to guests in another person's home. However, if you are the resident or owner, the recording is legal because you are recording your own conversation in your own home context.

Recording on-duty police officers performing their duties in public is generally understood to be lawful in Michigan. The state's eavesdropping statute turns on whether a conversation occurs in a "private place" where people have a reasonable expectation of privacy, and public streets, sidewalks, and other places open to the public are excluded from that definition. There is no published Michigan appellate decision squarely addressing recording police in public, and the Sixth Circuit has not issued a published, binding decision recognizing a general public right to record police; the closest on-point authority, Crawford v. Geiger, 656 F. App'x 190 (6th Cir. 2016), is unpublished and persuasive only. In practice, recording is safest when the interaction is indisputably in a public setting, the officer is speaking audibly to the general public, and the wearer is either a participant in the encounter or a stationary bystander capturing only what is audible to an unaided ear. When any of these conditions are unclear, treat the capture as requiring attorney review.

Michigan's eavesdropping statute applies broadly to any "private conversation" regardless of medium, including telephone and electronic communications. However, the participant exception means that if you are part of the conversation, you can record it without the other party's consent. Non-participants must obtain consent from all parties to legally record. This interpretation has been applied in cases involving phone calls, such as Sullivan v. Gray, 117 Mich. App. 476 (1982), and Fisher v. Perron, 30 F.4th 289 (6th Cir. 2022), which both addressed participant recording of telephone conversations. The statute does not displace federal wiretap-type rules governing interception of messages transmitted by communications common carriers; those federal rules remain applicable alongside Michigan's statute.

Michigan law distinguishes between recording in your own home and recording in shared or multi-occupant residences. If you are a resident, owner, or immediate family member of a home, MCL 750.539d(2) allows you to install and use devices to monitor the interior of that home without others' consent, except for a lewd or lascivious purpose. This carve-out applies even if others are present in the home, but it does not extend to shared spaces in a residence where you do not have the primary right to monitor, such as a room rented by a roommate or a common area in a group home. In such shared spaces, the general "private place" restriction in MCL 750.539d(1)(a) applies, and consent of the person entitled to privacy in that place is required. Lewis v. LeGrow, 258 Mich. App. 175 (2003), illustrates the line: a bedroom used by the recorder as their private space fell within the exception, but the same device used in a space shared with others who are entitled to privacy would not.

A hotel room or short-term rental unit is treated as a private place under Michigan law, and the right to record without consent is tied to who has the right to privacy in that space. If you are the lawful occupant of the room (e.g., the named guest or renter), you may record inside the room without others' consent, consistent with the home exception in MCL 750.539d(2), provided you are not using the recording for a lewd or lascivious purpose. If you are a guest in someone else's hotel room or rental unit, you do not have the right to record without the consent of the person entitled to privacy in that place. The statute does not create a blanket right for guests to record in spaces they do not control; the consent requirement turns on who is entitled to privacy in the specific location.