Price Gouging Laws After a Storm: What You Can Still Charge for Repairs

The governor declares a state of emergency on Tuesday night. By Wednesday morning your phone is full of missed calls from homeowners with tarps on their roofs, your shingle supplier has emailed a price increase, and the crew wants overtime. What can you charge without breaking price gouging laws?

In most storm-prone states, these laws switch on with that declaration and compare your post-storm price with what you charged before it. The safe price is your pre-storm price plus the cost increases you can document. California and Oklahoma cap the increase at 10% with narrow exceptions. Florida, New York, Louisiana and North Carolina look for a gross or unreasonable gap from your own recent prices. Texas bans “exorbitant or excessive” prices without a number. In every state, the record of what you charged before and what your costs did after is what protects you.

What turns a price gouging law on

These are state laws, enforced mainly by each state’s attorney general, and they apply only during a declared emergency in the area where you’re working. Outside one, they don’t touch your prices. Who can declare one differs, and it matters, because a storm in the news isn’t the same as a declaration on file.

• Only the governor: Florida and New York.
• The governor or a local official: California (a city or county emergency counts), North Carolina and Louisiana (a parish president can declare one).
• Either the governor or the President: Texas, if the federal declaration names any part of Texas, and Oklahoma, where the emergency area also takes in every neighboring county.

Before you quote storm work, check the governor’s executive orders page for your state and, in California, the Cal OES list of current price gouging protections, which shows the end date for each county. A federal disaster declaration on FEMA’s site doesn’t, on its own, trigger the law in Florida, New York or Louisiana.

Does it cover your repair work?

Yes, in most of these states. California’s Penal Code section 396 names “repair or reconstruction services” sold by a contractor and gives them a longer period than anything else. New York’s law covers repairs, and its attorney general lists roof repairs as an essential service. Florida, North Carolina, Louisiana and Oklahoma cover services generally. Texas is the odd one: its statute names building materials and construction tools, and repair labor falls under “another necessity” only by interpretation.

Price gouging rules in seven storm states

Here is how the seven states compare, read from each statute on October 19, 2026.

Oklahoma’s narrow exception and California’s new law

Two of those rows deserve a second look. Oklahoma’s cost exception is narrow: a shingle price rise caused by the storm itself may not qualify, so treat its 10% cap as the ceiling. And California has changed its law. SB 1365, signed on September 30, 2026, recasts the cost exceptions as defenses the contractor must prove. Under California’s normal rules it should take effect on January 1, 2027. Until then, Cal OES shows contractor protections running to April 13, 2027 in Imperial, Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties after Tropical Storm Rachel.

What a violation costs

The penalties are civil in most of these states and run per violation, so each overpriced job or quote can count separately:

• California: a misdemeanor, up to a year in county jail and a $10,000 fine, plus civil penalties of up to $2,500 per violation according to the attorney general.
• Florida: a violation of the state’s consumer protection law, with civil penalties of up to $10,000 per willful violation. The attorney general’s page also cites $1,000 per violation, up to $25,000 in 24 hours.
• Texas: up to $10,000 per violation, plus up to $250,000 more if the customer is 65 or older.
• New York: up to $25,000 per violation or three times gross receipts, whichever is greater.
• North Carolina: up to $5,000 per violation.
• Louisiana: a court-set civil penalty, and a criminal fine of up to $500 and six months in jail.
• Oklahoma: up to $10,000 per violation, and customers can sue too.

Licensing can bite harder than pricing. In Florida, unlicensed contracting during a governor-declared emergency is a third-degree felony under section 489.127, so an out-of-state roofer needs a Florida license before the first job. Rules elsewhere vary, so check our guide to contractor license requirements by state before you cross a state line for storm work.

A worked example: pricing a reroof after a Florida storm

This is an illustration with made-up numbers. A Florida roofer’s own invoices in the 30 days before the governor’s declaration average $450 a square (100 square feet) for an architectural-shingle tear-off and reroof. That $450 breaks down into $150 of materials, $160 of labor, $40 of disposal, $40 of overhead and $60 of margin.

After the storm, three costs go up, and each one has a document behind it:

• the supplier raises shingle prices 12%, adding $14.40 a square (dated invoices before and after);
• a quarter of crew hours now run at time-and-a-half, adding $20.00 a square (payroll records);
• the dumpster hauler raises its fee, adding $5.00 a square (the hauler’s invoice).

That’s $39.40 of documented cost. Add it to the pre-storm price, keep the same $60 margin, and the new price is $489.40 a square, 8.8% more. On a 25-square roof the job goes from $11,250 to $12,235, and every dollar of the $985 difference is tied to a document. Now suppose the same roofer quotes $600 a square instead. That leaves $110.60 a square, or $2,765 on the roof, with nothing behind it. That gap is exactly what a “gross disparity” comparison looks for.

Run the same numbers in other states and the line moves. In California, $489.40 is under the plain 10% cap of $495, so no defense is needed. In Oklahoma, the cap is also $495, but the storm-driven cost increases may not count as an exception, so $495 is the limit. Holding your dollar margin, rather than your percentage, is the cautious course everywhere. A written change order does the same job when a price changes mid-job.

The records that protect your price

None of this is legal advice for a particular job. If you’re unsure, the attorney general’s office in that state or a lawyer can tell you where the line sits. What every state’s test rewards is the same paperwork, kept before and after the storm:

• your own invoices or price list from the 30 days before the declaration (60 days in North Carolina);
• dated supplier invoices and price-increase letters for materials, from before and after;
• payroll reports showing overtime hours and rates;
• subcontractor, rental and hauler invoices;
• a one-line note on each estimate explaining any increase over your pre-storm price;
• a copy of the declaration and the date it took effect.

Door-to-door storm sales bring a second rule into play, the federal three-day right to cancel, which has its own emergency exception. Our article on the cooling-off rule for contractors covers when it applies. And for the price you start from, our guide to setting general contractor rates explains markup and margin.