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 […]
Category Archives: Unfair & Deceptive Acts & Practices (UDAP), including Discrimination
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 […]
The Federal Trade Commission this week sued fitness operators Fitness International LLC and Fitness & Sports Clubs, LLC for using cancellation procedures that made it difficult for consumers to unsubscribe from their monthly memberships. The complaint alleges that the gyms’ practices have incurred hundreds of millions of dollars in unwanted recurring charges. According to the […]
Over at the Consumer Finance Monitor blog, Alan Kaplinsky has questioned the legal authority for President Trump’s Executive Order barring so-called debanking; that is, when banks close bank accounts based on someone’s political views. The blog post argues that to the extent that the EO is based on the CFPB’s and FTC’s unfairness powers, it […]
The National Credit Union Administration has promulgated regulations regarding the applicability of state laws to federal credit unions, including 12 C.F.R. s. 701.35(c), which, after setting out how a federal credit union may may determine the types of fees affecting the maintenance of its accounts, provides: “State laws regulating such activities are not applicable to […]