The Department of Education has levied a $37.7 million fine against Grand Canyon University for allegedly misleading more than 7,500 former and current students about the cost of its doctoral programs. The Washington Post reports that, “Grand Canyon, which enrolls more than 118,000 students mostly online, disputes the charges and said it ‘will take all […]
Category Archives: Unfair & Deceptive Acts & Practices (UDAP), including Discrimination
The Federal Trade Commission issued 3 press releases this morning: FTC Case Leads to Permanent Ban Against Merchant Cash Advance Owner for Deceiving Small Businesses, Seizing Personal and Business Assets FTC Releases Reports on Cigarette and Smokeless Tobacco Sales and Marketing Expenditures for 2022 FTC Sends Nearly $100 Million in Refunds to Vonage Consumers Who […]
New data from the Federal Trade Commission shows that scams originating on social media have accounted for $2.7 billion in reported losses since 2021, more than any other contact method. The FTC says that the most frequently reported scams on social media are related to online shopping, with 44 percent of reports pointing to fraud […]
The FTC’s Penalty Offenses authority seems good for consumers and businesses. It allows the FTC to warn businesses about specific practices that would constitute unfair and deceptive conduct under its statute, the FTC Act, with the threat of punishing penalties if they nevertheless engaged in the conduct. This warning ideally deters the misconduct and eliminates […]
Ten years after the case was first filed, after intervening regulatory flip-flops and the Supreme Court’s decision in Texas Department of Housing & Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, a D.C. district judge granted summary judgment to HUD yesterday in a challenge to its disparate-impact regulations brought by insurers. Limiting its analysis to the question […]
The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2021 decision in AMG Capital Management v. FTC continues to hamper the Federal Trade Commission’s work, and the Commission rightly is shining a spotlight on it. In a recently announced enforcement action, the FTC lamented the AMG decision, which it said limited its ability to secure refunds for duped investors of […]
Luke Herrine of Alabama has written Consumer Protection after Consumer Sovereignty. Here’s the abstract: We seem to be in the middle of a paradigm shift in consumer protection. For decades, regulators understood their mission as “preserving choice” through more effective informational remedies. In the past decade — and more decisively during the Biden Administration — […]
As Adam Pulver noted earlier, the Chamber of Commerce won its challenge at the district court level to the CFPB’s determination that discrimination is unfair within the meaning of the CFPB’s UDAAP statute. It is, of course, no coincidence that the Chamber filed the case in Texas, where it was heard by Judge J. Campbell […]