DC's antitrust action against Amazon has returned from the dead

An appeals court has revived an antitrust lawsuit filed by the District of Columbia against Amazon for its illegal pricing schemes on competing platforms. In a ruling Thursday, the D.C. Circuit held that the district's charges "plausibly suggest" that Amazon has already obtained or is attempting to get monopoly power along those lines in the market.

 A 2021 lawsuit brought against Amazon by former Washington Attorney General Karl Racine was dismissed in court in 2022, where Amazon is alleged to participate in anticompetitive practices whereby it forbids third-party sellers from selling products at a lower price on any other online store including its own website than they would charge on Amazon, hence controlling the prices of products outside the platform. 

Way back in 2019, Amazon scrapped a policy that required sellers to offer the lowest possible price over other online channels within its marketplace, but the lawsuit alleges that Amazon's fair pricing policy represents "substantially identical substitutes."

Needless to say, Amazon disagrees with the court's decision to reopen the case. "Just like any storeowner who doesn't want to push a bad deal onto their customers, we don't highlight or promote deals that aren't price-competitive," an Amazon spokesperson, Tim Doyle, said in an email to The Verge. "This is part of our commitment to low prices to earn and retain customer trust, and we believe this is the right decision for both consumers and sellers in the long term."

The Federal Trade Commission is also investigating Amazon for antitrust, with a significant lawsuit that it had acted to stifle competition and hurt customers by exerting its monopoly power.