Just after Thanksgiving last week, the Eighth Circuit issued an opinion reversing a district court’s certification of a class in one of several actions brought by a consumer against Folgers and consolidated by the JPML. In the action on appeal, the consumer had alleged that representations on coffee containers featured misrepresentations about the number of […]
Category Archives: Unfair & Deceptive Acts & Practices (UDAP), including Discrimination
The past week has seen the announcement of two proposals to weaken mechanisms for identifying and combatting discriminatory lending practices. Last week, the CFPB issued a proposal to amend Regulation B under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, which would eliminate disparate impact claims, significantly narrow the prohibition on statements that would discourage applicants or potential […]
As previously discussed on this blog, in January 2025, the Fifth Circuit upheld the Department of Transportation’s authority to promulgate rules under 49 U.S.C. s. 41712, which authorizes the Secretary of Transportation to “order…air carrier[s]” to stop unfair or deceptive practices, or unfair methods of competition in air transportation. The Fifth Circuit granted a petition […]
Meirav Furth of Tel-Aviv University School of Law and NYU Law has written Discrimination in Contractual Performance : Theory, Evidence, and Preliminary Policy Prescriptions. Here’s the abstract This Article examines the often-overlooked practice of “selective performance” of standard form consumer contracts-where sellers permit employees to exercise discretion by waiving or modifying contractual terms to maintain customer […]
In 2024, the Department of Transportation issued a rule requiring airlines to disclose certain ancillary fees upfront when potential customers search for itineraries. Afraid that such transparency might cut into profits, the airline industry petitioned for review in the Fifth Circuit, which granted a stay pending appeal. In January 2025, a panel of the Fifth Circuit […]
Last week, I posted about a Western District of Washington decision granting partial summary judgment to the FTC on claims against Amazon relating to the enrollment flow for Amazon Prime subscriptions. A trial began earlier this week on the remaining claims, but, today, the FTC announced a $2.5 billion settlement, including $1.5 billion to be […]
Here, by Debra Kamin. It sounds very bad. Excerpt: In interviews, half a dozen current and former employees of HUD’s fair housing office said that the Trump political appointees had made it nearly impossible for them to do their jobs, which involve investigating and prosecuting landlords, real estate agents, lenders and others who discriminate based […]
The Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act, or ROSCA, restricts the use of “negative option features”–defined as “an offer or agreement to sell or provide any goods or services, a provision under which the customer’s silence or failure to take an affirmative action to reject goods or services or to cancel the agreement is interpreted by […]
The Federal Trade Commission and seven state attorney general offices announced a lawsuit against Ticketmaster.The FTC along with Virginia, Utah, Florida, Tennessee, Nebraska, Illinois and Colorado, sued Ticketmaster for violating the FTC Act and the Better Online Ticket Sales Act, a law created to stop attempts to automate the process of purchasing tickets en masse […]
In the American Banker. According to Berry, the CFPB wants to eliminate the use of disparate impact for proving violations of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. Because it’s so difficult to win using the other principal way of proving ECOA violations, disparate treatment (and the Seventh Circuit bars the use of disparate treatment under ECOA […]