Antitrust

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Abigail Slater resigned as Assistant Attorney General for the DOJ Antitrust Division on February 12, 2026—an exit widely reported as a forced ouster after the White House requested her resignation. Her departure is significant because it comes at a moment when antitrust enforcement is both high-stakes and politically salient. The Division is weeks away from trial in Live Nation/Ticketmaster, where reported settlement discussions in the days before her resignation highlighted divisions between the Antitrust Division and senior DOJ officials. Simultaneously, the division continues to manage conduct litigation against major technology companies and scrutiny of major transactions.  From the defining moves of her tenure to the forces behind her departure, this change in leadership marks a pivotal moment in U.S. competition enforcement at a time when “private bar attorneys are on high alert, questioning how federal competition laws will be enforced and which merger deals will be challenged.” To be sure, Slater’s resignation sets the stage for what (and who) comes next.

On September 25, in a landmark resolution that underscores the FTC’s renewed focus on digital consumer protection, Amazon agreed to pay $2.5 billion—including a $1 billion civil penalty and $1.5 billion in consumer refunds—under the Settlement Order in FTC v. Amazon.  The case, brought before Judge John H. Chun in the Western District of Washington, targeted Amazon’s Prime subscription program, alleging that the company enrolled consumers without proper consent and made cancellation unnecessarily difficult, in violation of the FTC Act and the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act (ROSCA).

The Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) released a shutdown plan dated September 29, 2025, outlining how it will operate during this lapse in appropriations.

FTC Commissioners are presidential appointees and are excepted from furlough during the shutdown. According to the shutdown plan, furloughs will be issued on a rolling basis for…

The skies are darkening over the “walled garden” of Apple’s operating system. A Northern District of California court cleared the way for antitrust claims against Apple over its iCloud storage service on mobile devices. The court’s decision to deny Apple’s motion to dismiss in Gamboa v. Apple is a wake-up call for tech companies: courts are ready and willing to scrutinize platform-based restrictions, especially when those barriers are baked into product design. Judge Eumi Lee’s ruling also shows how a change in legal strategy can make all the difference for plaintiffs – or defendants – when charting a course through the early stages of antitrust litigation.

The devastating January 2025 wildfires in southern California prompted Governor Newsom to declare a state of emergency on January 7, 2025 for Los Angeles and Ventura counties. This triggered California laws around price gouging and pricing restrictions in the wake of the emergency. While other, overlapping states of emergency will impact how price restrictions are ultimately calculated and considered – including local emergencies, and a statewide emergency relating to the ongoing bird flu outbreak – that the unprecedented scale of the wildfires will undoubtedly lead to increased scrutiny of pricing practices during the immediate aftermath, recovery and rebuilding.

The Department of Justice and eight state attorneys general filed a civil antitrust lawsuit in August against RealPage Inc. – a Texas-based software company that provides property management software – and several landlords using its software. This case adds to the growing number of antitrust cases targeting algorithmic pricing tools, and is another example of federal regulators taking a tough stance on new AI technologies.