About PlainRegWatch

Our Mission

PlainRegWatch is a free, public-interest intelligence platform that tracks US state regulations across five critical categories: data privacy, AI regulation, food chemical bans, right to repair, and employment and worker protection. We believe that regulatory transparency is essential to a functioning democracy and a fair marketplace.

State-level regulation in the United States is a complex, rapidly evolving patchwork. What is legal in one state may be prohibited in another. A food additive banned in California may be freely used in Texas. An AI hiring tool that requires disclosure in New York City may operate without restriction in most other jurisdictions. Our purpose is to make this regulatory landscape accessible, searchable, and understandable for businesses, researchers, policymakers, journalists, and consumers.

We do not advocate for or against any particular regulation. We present the data as it exists in official sources and let users draw their own conclusions about the regulatory environment in each state. Informed stakeholders make better decisions when they can see the complete regulatory picture rather than fragments gathered from dozens of different state legislature websites.

Data Sources

PlainRegWatch aggregates data from multiple authoritative sources to build a comprehensive view of the US state regulatory landscape. Our primary data sources include:

  • IAPP (International Association of Privacy Professionals) - Comprehensive tracker of US state privacy legislation, including bill status, key provisions, and enforcement mechanisms
  • NCSL (National Conference of State Legislatures) - Official bipartisan legislative research covering AI legislation, employment law developments, and emerging regulatory trends across all 50 states
  • EWG (Environmental Working Group) - Food additive and chemical safety regulation tracker, monitoring state-level bans and restrictions on food ingredients
  • Repair Association (Repair.org) - The leading advocacy organization tracking right-to-repair legislation in every US state, maintaining the most complete database of repair law proposals and enactments
  • Official state legislature records - Bill text, committee reports, voting records, and governor action from individual state legislative websites
  • Law firm compliance guides - Analysis from major law firms that track regulatory developments and publish compliance guidance for their clients

Each regulation entry in our database includes a direct link to its official source document so that users can independently verify the information we present. We never rely on a single source when cross-referencing is possible.

Methodology

Our approach to processing regulatory data prioritizes accuracy, completeness, and timeliness. We follow a structured methodology for each regulation category:

Data collection: We systematically monitor official legislative databases, regulatory tracking organizations, and law firm analyses for new bills, amendments, and enactments in our five tracked categories. Each piece of legislation is identified by its bill number, sponsoring state, and legislative session.

Classification: Every regulation is categorized by type (data privacy, AI, food chemical, right to repair, or employment), status (enacted, pending, or failed), and key attributes including effective date, penalty provisions, enforcement mechanisms, and scope of coverage. We use a consistent taxonomy across all states to enable meaningful comparisons.

Scoring: Each state receives a strictness score based on the breadth of its regulatory portfolio, the severity of penalties, the strength of enforcement mechanisms, and the number of categories with active legislation. This score is relative and updated as new regulations are enacted. It is designed as a comparison tool, not an absolute measure of regulatory burden.

Quality assurance: Before publication, each regulation entry is verified against at least one official source. Summaries are reviewed for accuracy and neutrality. We do not editorialize or express opinions about whether any regulation is beneficial or harmful. Our role is to present the facts clearly.

Data Freshness and Update Schedule

Our database is updated on a rolling basis as new regulations are enacted, amended, or proposed. Most US state legislative sessions run from January through June, with some states meeting year-round. The pace of regulatory activity peaks during session months and slows during interim periods.

Each regulation entry includes a "last verified" date and a link to its official source document. We typically process new enactments within one to two weeks of the governor signing a bill into law. Pending legislation is updated as it advances through committee and floor votes. When a bill fails or is withdrawn, we update its status accordingly.

Data currency varies by category. Employment law and data privacy regulations see the most frequent changes due to high legislative activity. AI regulation is the fastest-growing category, with new proposals appearing monthly across multiple states. Food chemical bans and right-to-repair legislation tend to advance more slowly through the legislative process.

Editorial Independence

Content on PlainRegWatch is compiled by our editorial team from official source data. Raw data from IAPP, NCSL, EWG, Repair.org, and official US state legislature records is transformed into readable regulation profiles through our continuous editorial pipeline, then validated against the source document before publication. The PlainRegWatch editorial team is responsible for editorial standards, methodology, and corrections.

We do not accept payment, sponsorship, or promoted placement from manufacturers, sellers, or any covered entity. Our only revenue source is contextual display advertising served by Google AdSense, advertisers do not influence which entities we cover or how we present data, and they do not receive preferential placement.

Limitations and Disclaimer

PlainRegWatch provides general informational summaries of state regulations. This is not legal advice and should not be relied upon for compliance decisions. Important limitations to understand:

  • Regulations change frequently, a law shown as "pending" may have been enacted or withdrawn since our last update
  • Our summaries are simplified descriptions of complex legal texts and may not capture every nuance or exception
  • Penalty amounts shown are statutory maximums, actual enforcement varies by jurisdiction and circumstances
  • Our database tracks five specific categories and does not cover all state-level regulation (e.g., we do not track healthcare, environmental, or financial services regulation)
  • Effective dates may be subject to delayed implementation, phased rollouts, or judicial injunctions not reflected in our data
  • Some regulations include exemptions for small businesses, nonprofits, or specific industries that are not captured in summary format

Always verify current requirements through official state sources and consult a qualified attorney for guidance specific to your situation. PlainRegWatch is not affiliated with any government agency, legislative body, or regulatory authority.

Editorial Team

PlainRegWatch is published by PlainRegWatch Editorial, a small independent team that builds public-data portals so that government records remain accessible to the people they affect. Our editorial work on state regulatory tracking is led by editors with backgrounds in policy-research methodology and legislative-data curation, disciplines that combine to vet what IAPP, NCSL, EWG, and Repair.org publish, cross-check it against each state's own legislative text, and translate enactment status, effective dates, and category classifications (data privacy, AI regulation, food chemical bans, right to repair, employment law) into language a citizen, small-business owner, or compliance officer can use.

We do not employ practicing attorneys or registered lobbyists, and we do not publish original legal advice. Instead, our editorial standard is verification, citation, and transparency: every regulation, enactment date, and effective-date marker we surface is traceable to a state legislature's own record or one of our named tracking-organization sources, and every methodology decision (how we classify a law's category, how we determine "enacted" vs. "pending," how we handle amendments to existing law) is documented at /methodology. When source data has known shortcomings, for example, a category's coverage varies by tracking organization, we say so on the page where the data appears, not buried in a footer.

Editorial questions, fact corrections, and source-attribution issues should go to hello@plainregwatch.com. We are accountable for what we publish: every correction we make is reflected in the next data refresh. PlainRegWatch does not accept paid placement, sponsored coverage, lobbying-firm subscriptions, or any incentive that would compromise the neutrality of how rules, agencies, or comment positions appear on the site.

Contact

For questions, feedback, data correction requests, or partnership inquiries, email us at hello@plainregwatch.com. We welcome reports of data discrepancies, suggestions for additional regulations to track, and corrections to existing entries.

If you are a researcher, journalist, or policymaker who needs bulk access to our regulatory data for analysis purposes, please reach out and we will do our best to accommodate your needs.