DC’s antitrust case against Amazon comes back to life

An appeals court has an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon filed by the Attorney General of Washington, DC more than three years ago. The online retailer must now face allegations that it illegally raised prices for consumers.

The lawsuit was originally filed and cited Amazon’s practices related to third-party sellers on its platform. Specifically, it called out a provision in the company’s agreements with third-party sellers that allowed it to punish businesses that offered its products at lower prices on non-Amazon platforms. Karl Racine, the AG at the time, said these agreements allowed the company to “impose an artificially high price floor across the online retail marketplace.” Racine later the case to include Amazon’s pricing tactics for wholesalers.

Amazon has disputed those allegations, and the case was dismissed in 2022. But an appeals court has now reversed that decision. “Viewed as a whole, the District’s allegations about Amazon’s market share and maintenance of its market power through the challenged agreements plausibly suggest that Amazon either already possesses monopoly power over online marketplaces or is close to a ‘dangerous probability of achieving monopoly power,’” the judge wrote.

The reversal adds to Amazon’s antitrust woes. The company is also facing from the Federal Trade Commission and more than a dozen states. The UK’s antitrust regulator has also opened centered around the company’s $4 billion investment into Anthropic.

In a statement, DC’s current AG Brian Schwalb noted that the district “was the first jurisdiction to take antitrust enforcement action” against the company. “Now, our case will move forward, and we will continue fighting to stop Amazon’s unfair and unlawful practices that have raised prices for District consumers and stifled innovation and choice across online retail.”

Amazon didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.