FTC can proceed with antitrust claims against Amazon, judge rules

A sealed decision by the federal judge has rejected most of Amazon’s arguments and allowed an antitrust case brought by the Federal Trade Commission to proceed, said The Washington Post.

At first, Amazon representatives were quite happy. The retail giant has been fighting to get the FTC’s case dismissed, saying that Amazon operates as an illegal monopoly. On Tuesday, it celebrated reports that the judge had dismissed parts of the agency’s claims.

Some on social media speculated this was a big deal for Amazon – even though no one can possibly know which parts of the case, initially filed in September 2023, were dismissed as the judge’s order is sealed until mid-October.

Whoa. Seattle judge dismisses some of the FTCs antitrust case against Amazon but we don’t know bc details are sealed til mid oct pic.twitter.com/E69cc17LYY

undefined Josh Sisco (@joshua_sisco) September 30, 2024

However, The Washington Post has now spoken to sources familiar with the order, and it turns out that the Seattle-based federal judge permitted the FTC’s claims that Amazon violated federal antitrust and competition laws to move forward.

Only some of the claims brought by the state attorney general about alleged breaches of state laws were shelved.

This means that the lawsuit, claiming that the company abused its market dominance to squeeze merchants, crush rivals, dictate higher prices, and sell lower-quality goods for American shoppers, is alive and well – as is FTC chair Linda Khan’s legal campaign to rein in the power of big tech companies.

Some of the more egregious actions Amazon is accused of include overcharging sellers, degrading quality for shoppers, preventing rivals sellers from lowering prices, and biasing the platform’s online search results.

For example, Amazon seller fees range from advertising fees to monthly charges for each item sold – adding up to nearly 50% of a seller's profit paid to the online shopping behemoth.

Furthermore, the lawsuit states that sellers were often punished by Amazon for offering lower prices on similar Amazon brand products by “burying the other products so far down on Amazon’s search results that they become effectively invisible.”

The FTC also claimed in May that top Amazon executives, including founder Jeff Bezos, have been using disappearing messaging apps such as Signal to conceal potential evidence in this landmark antitrust case.

Amazon is not the only tech giant accused by regulators of abusing its powers to strategically control search engines, social media, and online retailing – essentially becoming the gatekeepers of what information is being fed to online consumers and then profiting off the control.

The FTC is also battling Meta in court, and the Justice Department is taking on Google and Apple over alleged monopolistic practices and violations of antitrust laws.

To Khan, the case against Amazon is probably personally important. She received national attention after writing a paper titled “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox” in law school – as The Post puts it, this made her an avatar of the “hipster antitrust” movement in the US.