The FTC announced last Friday that it will no longer enforce policies against “disparate-impact or unfair discrimination” claims. This will affect the agency’s once active enforcement against auto dealers’ discriminatory financing practices that cheat minority car buyers. In 2022, for example, the Commission alleged that Passport Auto, a Washington D.C.-area auto dealer, violated the FTC […]
Category Archives: Unfair & Deceptive Acts & Practices (UDAP), including Discrimination
In August 2025, a divided panel of the Sixth Circuit denied an industry petition for review of a 2024 FCC rule imposing reporting requirements on telecommunications in the event of data breaches involving customers’ personally identifiable information. The industry had raised both arguments about the FCC’s statutory authority, and a 2017 Congressional Review Act disapproval. […]
A third appellate decision today about FDCA preemption….it’s definitely clerk turnover season! After studies started casting doubt on the notion that oral phenylephrine (oral PE) was an effective nasal decongestant, consumers across the country and a retail pharmacy sued drug manufacturers under the theory that the manufacturers had produced, marketed, and sold “nasal decongestants containing […]
For those who haven’t had the fortune of trying to find a rental apartment in New York City, there has long been a system of “brokers’ fees”, where the *renter* is required to pay a broker a fee, often equal to one months’ rent, in order to obtain an apartment, which was negotiated by the […]
From Trump v. Slaughter: “the FTC has the power to promulgate substantive rules that carry the force of law. In the consumer-protection realm, for instance, the FTC is tasked with giving content to the startlingly abstract idea of “acts or practices which are unfair or deceptive.” 15 U. S. C. §57a(a)(1)(B).” But here’s how Gorsuch […]
According to the complaint in Fish v. Entrata Inc., when Property Management Companies (PMCs)–landlords–switched from offering a product on an opt-in basis to offering tenants the product for free for a month, followed by a negative option opt-out, it had a dramatic effect on sales: 9. The RentDynamics website explains to PMCs that the “opt-out” […]
Regular Amazon users probably know that if they agree to subscribe to certain products and receive deliveries at regular intervals, Amazon charges less than if they buy the items one at a time. But now some plaintiffs have brought a would-be class action in which they claim that Amazon raises the price after someone subscribes, […]
Here. New § 1002.6 provides in part: ECOA “does not provide that the ‘effects test’ applies for determining whether there is discrimination in violation of the Act.” The regulation also purports to define discouragement and covers special purpose credit programs. I wonder how long before a court challenge is filed.
Alexander Panelli, a consumer who bought sheets that Target markets as “100% cotton” and “800 thread count” sued Target for violating California consumer law, alleging that the thread counts were actually much lower. In his amended complaint, he noted that it is “physically impossible for cotton threads to be fine enough to allow for 600 […]
In 2024, the FTC finalized its “click-to-cancel” rule, which tried to make it as easy for consumers to cancel their enrollment in recurring subscriptions ias it was to sign up. In 2025, the Eighth Circuit vacated that rule on notice-and-comment grounds. Today, New York City’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection proposed its own version […]