The sticker price is legally binding - it constitutes an offer, and the cash register surreptitiously charging a higher price from what the customer has agreed to constitutes fraud. The problem is that asserting your rights takes time, resources, and energy that people shopping at these stores generally do not have. The people that would have the ability to push back instead just use their resources to move on and shop somewhere else that isn't immediately abusing them.
"The people that would have the ability to push back"...
And they can. Just bring it up to the cashier or managers attention, and voila, they adjust the price. Please let me know if you have had a different experience.
> The sticker price is legally binding, as it constitutes an offer
While I wish that that were how things worked, unfortunately, the US legal system disagrees [0].
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invitation_to_treat#Case_law