FTC Releases Summary of Key Accomplishments

Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina M. Khan released a summary of the agency’s key accomplishments over the last four years that have improved Americans’ everyday lives and stopped illegal consolidation that raises prices and hampers innovation.

These actions include:

Putting Money Back in Americans’ Pocketbooks: The Commission has helped put more money back into the pockets of American consumers by banning junk fees for short-term lodging and live-event ticketing; finalizing a “click to cancel” rule requiring companies to make it just as easy to cancel subscriptions as it is to sign up; and banning auto dealers from sticking American consumers with junk fees. The agency took action against companies that use deceptive dark patterns to trick consumers into making unwanted purchases, obtaining more than $245 million for consumer refunds from Fortnite maker Epic Games. The FTC also secured $48 million in refunds for consumers who the agency alleged were charged junk fees, suffered unfair eviction practices, and unfairly had their security deposits withheld by corporate landlord Invitation Homes.

Stopping Illegal Consolidation that Raises Prices and Reduces Innovation: The FTC successfully sued to block the $24.6 billion merger between Kroger and Albertsons, a deal the agency alleged would have raised prices, led to store closures, and reduced compensation for unionized workers. The agency has vigorously policed consolidation across critical sectors of the economy, including semiconductors, defense, energy, consumer products, healthcare, and pharmaceuticals. The agency also defeated Meta’s summary judgment motion in the FTC’s ongoing lawsuit alleging Meta engaged in a series of acquisitions, including Instagram and WhatsApp, to illegally maintain its monopoly power.

Securing Americans’ Access to Healthcare: The FTC took numerous actions to help ensure Americans have access to affordable health care, including challenging patents on drug products, including inhalers and EpiPens, that were improperly listed in the FDA’s Orange Book. The FTC’s efforts led pharma companies to slash out-of-pocket costs for inhalers from $500 or more to just $35. The agency sued the three largest pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) for allegedly engaging in anticompetitive rebating practices that inflated the cost of insulin, sued a Texas anesthesiology provider that allegedly engaged in a private-equity roll-up scheme that consolidated the market and raised prices, and banned “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli from doing business in the pharmaceutical industry after he hiked the price of a lifesaving medication.

Protecting Workers from Coercion and Deception: The FTC banned noncompete clauses from most employment contracts, which the agency estimated would increase the average American worker’s wages by $524 a year. The FTC has also taken enforcement actions in the space, ordering security guard and glass container manufacturing companies to drop coercive noncompete clauses on low-wage workers and ordering two building services contractors to drop “no-hire” clauses with their customers that blocked the ability of employees to freely switch jobs and negotiate for better pay or benefits. The Commission took action against companies such as Care.com, Grubhub and Lyft for misleading workers about how much money they would make, and returned nearly $60 million to more than 140,000 Amazon Flex drivers after Amazon illegally withheld tips from its drivers.

Checking Harmful Commercial Surveillance: The agency has aggressively policed the illegal collection, use, and sale of consumers’ sensitive personal information, banning data brokers from selling consumers’ precise geolocation data and banning digital health apps from disclosing consumers’ sensitive health data for advertising purposes. And, in the FTC’s first privacy action related to connected cars, the FTC banned General Motors for five years from disclosing drivers’ geolocation data and driving behavior information to consumer reporting agencies. The agency has been particularly focused on protecting kids and teens online, strengthening the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA) to further limit companies’ ability to profit from kids’ personal data. The agency took numerous enforcement actions against companies for violating COPPA, including obtaining a record $275 million penalty from Fortnite creator Epic Games and suing TikTok over charges that it flagrantly violated the children’s privacy law and its 2019 order related to previous COPPA violations.

Protecting Americans’ Right to Repair: The FTC has worked to combat unlawful restrictions on consumers ability to repair products they buy, saving Americans money and allowing independent repair shops to thrive. The agency recently sued Deere & Company over its use of unfair practices that have driven up equipment repair costs for farmers while depriving farmers of the ability to make timely repairs on critical farming equipment, and it previously obtained orders against Weber, Harley-Davidson, and Westinghouse to protect consumers’ right to repair products they buy from those companies.                      

Helping Small Businesses Compete on a Level Playing Field: The FTC sued Amazon for raising costs for sellers that rely on the platform to reach consumers, ordered Mastercard to stop illegally blocking merchants from routing debit card payments through its payment network and raising costs for small businesses, and protected franchisees from junk fees and preserved their right to report law violations to the government. The agency also reinvigorated enforcement of the Robinson-Patman Act, which prohibits price discrimination that squeezes independent retailers, by suing Southern Glazer’s Wine and Spirits, the largest U.S. distributor of wine and spirits, and Pepsi for favoring one large, big box retailer over other competitors when providing promotions and services.

In the last four years, the FTC has worked to maximize its authority to carry out its mission to protect consumers and promote competition, including by reactivating enforcement of the Robinson-Patman Act. It has proposed and finalized new rules that allow the agency to return money back to injured consumers, and it has brought its first-ever actions under the Health Breach Notification Rule with cases against prescription drug discount provider GoodRx and fertility tracking app PreMom, the Military Lending Act in a case against Harris Jewelers and the Opioid Addiction Recovery Fraud Prevention Act, in cases against R360 and Monument.