Lesh: Leave grocery shoppers alone at the exit

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At many Walmart locations, leaving the store means one more stop: talking to an employee at the exit who asks to see your receipt. For some, it’s a minor formality. For others, it carries the weight of an accusation. What matters, legally, is that while Walmart can ask, it usually can’t compel. Outside of membership clubs or specific suspicion of theft, showing your receipt is voluntary.

The company’s rationale is straightforward: to maximize loss prevention. “Shrinkage,” or inventory lost through theft, error, fraud or administrative mistakes, has surged in recent years. Retail executives surveyed by the National Retail Federation reported a 93% rise in the average number of shoplifting incidents and a 90% increase in monetary losses in 2023 compared to 2019, based on data from 164 chains representing $1.52 trillion in sales. It’s easy to see why stores view receipt checks as a visible, low-cost control, but business logic is not the same as legal authority. The line between asking and detaining has been litigated before.

Still, not everyone buys those numbers. Critics argue the NRF’s “shrink” data is inflated to serve retail lobbying efforts. This wouldn’t be a surprise, given NRF has been caught lying about numbers before. That matters because Walmart frames receipt checks as a reaction to a crisis, when in reality, theft may be smaller than the industry wants us to think. Other major grocery retailers, such as Kroger and Target, typically do not require receipt checks, demonstrating that Walmart’s approach is a corporate choice rather than an industry standard.

In the United States, private businesses don’t have police powers. State laws make a narrow exception known as the “shopkeeper’s privilege,” letting merchants detain someone only if they have reasonable grounds to suspect theft for a reasonable time and with reasonable force. Simply refusing to show a receipt does not meet that standard. Even universal policies, like claiming to check every receipt, do not override the “reasonable suspicion” requirement, though they may reduce claims of profiling.

Colorado law makes it even plainer. Under Colorado Revised Statute 18-3-303, “any person who knowingly confines or detains another without the other’s consent and without proper legal authority commits false imprisonment.”

The offense is a class 2 misdemeanor, escalating to a felony if force is used, detention is prolonged or a minor is involved. Even briefly blocking someone’s exit can be unlawful if there is no specific cause. Employees who overstep this boundary risk criminal charges in addition to civil liability.

One case makes that point clear. In McCann v. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., a mother and her two kids were held for about an hour in Bangor, Maine, after workers wrongly accused them of shoplifting. Employees blocked their path, claimed police were on the way and even denied her 12-year-old son a bathroom break. A jury awarded them $20,000, and an appeals court upheld the decision, arguing confinement can result from threats or false claims of authority, not just physical restraint.

And this isn’t ancient history. In 2024, Michigan shopper Brandie Howard sued Walmart after employees accused her of theft, even after she’d shown her receipt and been cleared by a manager. Her attorney said that “they were making up false statements” and “the police were able to show she had purchased everything.”

Walmart’s loss-prevention culture can also feed into racial profiling. In 2022, an Oregon jury awarded $4.4 million to Michael Mangum, a Black man falsely reported to 911 by a Walmart employee. The Ithacan reported in 2023 that former Walmart employee Rugie Baldeh said managers profiled her, leaving her feeling “less than human.” These incidents are not isolated; they highlight how employee discretion can collide with structural inequities.
These checks are framed as preventive rather than punitive, but the practice depends on frontline employees making rapid judgment calls: whom to stop, how long to hold them and how closely to scrutinize their purchases. When those decisions intersect with a history of racial profiling, the risks become clear.
That discretion is the central problem. Walmart is the nation’s largest grocer, serving millions of low-income families. Because of wealth gaps, Black and Hispanic households are statistically more likely to fall into those income brackets. When workers at the door decide whom to stop and how long to hold them, the risk of racial bias isn’t hypothetical — it’s baked in.

The legal distinction becomes clearer here. Membership clubs like Costco and Sam’s Club operate differently. When you sign up, you agree that all receipts and merchandise will be inspected as you leave the warehouse. That consent is part of the contract. Walmart, on the other hand, is open-door retail. Anyone can shop there without signing away their rights. The irony is that Walmart owns Sam’s Club, so the company understands the legal difference; yet, the distinction between a request and a requirement often gets lost in practice.

Walmart’s shrink problem is not the fault of shoppers. If customers are asked to ring up their own items and are then treated like suspects at the exit, it speaks less to consumer honesty than to Walmart’s own contradictions. Corporate America has long treated low-wage workers as disposable and customers as potential thieves; receipt checks are just another symptom of that distrust. People stealing is not evidence that every shopper is dishonest — it’s evidence that something is broken in how your business operates, whether that’s understaffed floors, underpaid employees or a self-checkout model built on shifting responsibility to the consumer.

Walmart’s official stance is organizational, not legal. The company has an asset protection division, with teams, training and roles designed to reduce theft. The work is described to maintain safe, efficient stores. But its public-facing materials emphasize compliance and prevention, not any supposed right to detain customers. In other words, Walmart equips its people to look for shrinkage, but job titles don’t override state law.

These checks are framed as preventive rather than punitive, but the practice depends on frontline employees making rapid judgment calls: whom to stop, how long to hold them and how closely to scrutinize their purchases. When those decisions intersect with a history of racial profiling, the risks become clear.

In the end, Walmart can ask, but the law says the store cannot make you comply. The bigger question is whether a company’s convenience is worth the civil rights and trust it risks every time an employee stops someone at the door. Until courts and companies settle that tension, receipt checks will keep raising the same issue: How much corporate power belongs in everyday life?

Reach Maci Lesh at letters@collegian.com or on social media @RMCollegian.