In a prior post, I made the important if wholly unoriginal point that the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) recent policy statement regarding unfair methods of competition (UMC)—perhaps a form of “soft law”—has neither legal force nor precedential value. Gus Hurwitz offers a more thorough discussion of the issue here.
But policy statements may still have value as guidance documents for industry and the bar. They can also inform the courts, providing a framework for the commission’s approach to the specific facts and circumstances that underlie a controversy. That is, as the 12th century sage Maimonides endeavored in his own “Guide for the Perplexed,” they can elucidate rationales for particular principles and decisions of law.
While ostensibly intended to provide such guidance, the new Policy Statement contains few specifics about the particular conduct that the Commission might deem to be unfair, and suggests that the FTC has broad discretion to challenge nearly any conduct with which it disagrees.
There’s so much going on at (or being announced by) my old agency that it’s hard to keep up. One recent development reaches back into FTC history—all the way to late 2021—to find an initiative at the boundary of soft and hard law: that is, the issuance to more than 700 U.S. firms of notices of penalty offenses about “fake reviews and other misleading endorsements.”
A notice of penalty offenses is supposed to provide a sort of firm-specific guidance: a recipient is informed that certain sorts of conduct have been deemed to violate the FTC Act. It’s not a decision or even an allegation that the firm has engaged in such prohibited conduct. In that way, it’s like soft law.
On the other hand, it’s not entirely anemic. In AMG Capital, the Supreme Court held that the FTC cannot obtain equitable monetary remedies for violations of the FTC Act in the first instance—at least, not under Section 13b of the FTC Act. But there are circumstances under which the FTC can get statutory penalties (up to just over $50,000 per violation, and a given course of conduct might entail many violations) for, e.g., violating a regulation that implements Section 5.
Here it should be noted that Section 5(m) of the FTC Act also permits monetary penalties if “the Commission determines in a proceeding . . . that any act or practice is unfair or deceptive, and issues a final cease and desist order” and the firm has “actual knowledge that such act or practice is unfair or deceptive and is unlawful.”
What does that mean? In brief, if there’s an agency decision (not a consent order, but not a federal court decision either) that a certain type of conduct by one firm is “unfair or deceptive” under Section 5, then another firm can be assessed statutory monetary penalties if the Commission determines that it has undertaken the same type of conduct and if, because the firm has received a notice of penalty offenses, it has “actual knowledge that such act or practice is unfair or deceptive.”
So, now we’re back to monetary penalties for violations of Section 5 in the first instance if a very special form of mens rea can be established. A notice of penalty offenses provides guidance, but it also carries real legal risk.
Back to pesky questions and details. Do the letters provide notice? What might 700-plus disparate contemporary firms all do that fits a given course of unlawful conduct (at least as determined by administrative process)? To grab just a few examples among companies that begin with the letter “A”: what problematic conduct might be common to, e.g., Abbott Labs, Abercrombie & Fitch, Adidas, Adobe, Albertson’s, Altria, Amazon, and Annie’s (the organic-food company)?
Well, the letter (or the sample posted) points to all sorts of potentially helpful guidance about not running afoul of the law. But more specifically, the FTC points to eight administrative decisions that model the conduct (by other firms) already found to be unfair or deceptive. That, surely, is where the rubber hits the road and the details are specified. Or is it?
The eight administrative decisions are an odd lot. Most of the matters have to do with manufacturers or packagers (or service providers) making materially false or misleading statements in advertising their products or services.
The most recent case is In the Matter of Cliffdale Associates, a complaint filed in 1981 and decided by the commission in 1984. For those unfamiliar with Cliffdale (nearly everyone?), the defendant sold something “variously known as the Ball-Matic, the Ball-Matic Gas Saver Valve and the Gas Saver Valve.” The oldest decision, Wilbert W. Haase, was filed in 1939 and decided in 1941 (one of two decided during World War II).
The decisions make for interesting reading. For example, in R.J. Reynolds, we learn that:
…while as a general proposition the smoking of cigarettes in moderation by individuals not allergic nor hypersensitive to cigarette smoking, who are accustomed to smoking and are in normal good health, with no existing pathology of any of the bodily systems, is not appreciably harmful-what is normal for one person may be excessive for another.
I’ll confess: In my misspent youth, I did some research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), but I did not know that.
Interesting reading but, dare I suggest, not super helpful from the standpoint of notice or guidance. R.J. Reynolds manufactured, advertised, and sold cigarettes and other tobacco products; and they advertised that “the effect that the smoking of its cigarettes was either beneficial to or not injurious to a particular bodily system.” So, “not appreciably harmful,” but that doesn’t mean therapeutic.
A few things stand out. First, all of the complaints were brought prior to the birth of the internet. Second, five of the eight complaints were brought before the 1975 Magnuson-Moss Act amendments to the FTC Act that, among other things, revised the standards for finding conduct “unfair or deceptive” under Section 5. Third, having read the cases, I have no idea how the old cases are supposed to provide notice to the myriad recipients of these letters.
Section 5 provides that “unfair methods of competition” and “unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce” are unlawful. Section 5(n)—courtesy of the 1975 amendments—qualifies the prohibition:
The Commission shall have no authority under this section … to declare unlawful an act or practice on the grounds that such act or practice is unfair unless the act or practice causes or is likely to cause substantial injury to consumers which is not reasonably avoidable by consumers themselves and not outweighed by countervailing benefits to consumers or to competition. … the Commission may consider established public policies as evidence to be considered with all other evidence. Such public policy considerations may not serve as a primary basis for such determination.
As Geoff Manne and I have noted, the amendmentwas adopted by a Congress that thought the FTC had been overreaching in its application of Section 5. Others have made (and expanded upon) the same observation: former FTC Chairman William Kovacic’s 2010 Senate testimony is one excellent example among many. Continued congressional frustration actually briefly led to a shutdown of the FTC.
Here’s my take on the notice provided by the Notices of Penalty Authority: they might as well tell firms that the FTC has found that violating Section 5’s prohibition of unfair or deceptive acts or practices violates Section 5’s prohibition of unfair or deceptive acts or practices and (b) we’re not saying you violated Section 5, and we’re not saying you didn’t, but if you do violate Section 5, you’re subject to statutory monetary penalties, statutory and judicial impediments to monetary penalties notwithstanding.
What sort of notice is that? Might the federal courts see this as an attempt at an end-run around statutory limits on the FTC’s authority? Might Congress? If you’re perplexed by the FTC’s mass notice action, which authority will provide you a guide?
Former U.S. Labor Secretary Gene Scalia games out the future of the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) recently proposed rule that would ban the use of most noncompete clauses in today’s Wall Street Journal. He writes that:
The Federal Trade Commission’s ban on noncompete agreements may be the most audacious federal rule ever proposed. If finalized, it would outlaw terms in 30 million contracts and pre-empt laws in virtually every state. It would also, by the FTC’s own account, reduce capital investment, worker training and possibly job growth, while increasing the wage gap. The commission says the rule would deliver a meager 2.3% wage increase for hourly workers, versus a 9.4% increase for CEOs.
Three phases lie ahead for the proposal: rule-making, litigation and compliance. … The FTC is likely to finalize the rule within a year, to ensure the Biden administration can begin the task of defending it in the litigation phase. The proposal’s legal vulnerabilities are legion. …
Sketching the likely future of the proposed rule in this way is helpful. Most of those affected by this rule are unlikely to be familiar with the rulemaking process or the judicial process for reviewing agency rules; indeed, many are likely to hear coverage of the proposed rule and mistake it for a regulation that’s already in effect. The cost of that confusion is made clear by Scalia’s ultimate takeaway: that the courts are very likely to reject the rule (and perhaps the FTC’s authority to adopt these types of competition rules), but only after a protracted and lengthy judicial review process (including, quite possibly, a trip to the U.S. Supreme Court).
As Scalia explains, many employers will act upon this likely ill-fated rule out of fear or confusion, altering their employment contacts in ways that will be hard to later amend:
Unfortunately, some employers may now reduce the benefits they offer in exchange for noncompetes, for fear the rule may eventually render the agreement unenforceable. But because the FTC may change aspects of the rule—and because the courts are likely to invalidate it—American businesses don’t need to invest now in complying with this deeply flawed proposal.
This should raise serious concern about the FTC’s approach to this issue. It is very likely that the Commission is aware of the rocky shoals that lie ahead. But it is also likely that the Commission knows that its posturing will affect the conduct of the business community. It’s not much of a leap to conclude that the Commission—that is, its three-member majority—is using its rulemaking process, not its substantive legal authority, as a norm entrepreneur, to jawbone the business community and move the Overton window that frames discussion of noncompete clauses. I feel dirty writing a sentence as jargon-filled as that one, but no dirtier than the Commission should feel for abusing rulemaking procedures to achieve substantive ends beyond its legal authority.
This concern resembles an issue currently before the Supreme Court: Axon Enterprises v. FTC, another case that involves the FTC. Generally, agency actions cannot be challenged in federal court until the agency has finalized its action and affected parties have exhausted their appeals before the agency. Indeed, the statutes that govern some agencies (including the FTC) have provisions that have been interpreted as preventing challenges to the agency’s authority from being brought before a federal district court.
In Axon, the Supreme Court is considering whether a company subject to administrative proceedings before the Commission can challenge the constitutionality of those proceedings in district court prior to their completion. Oral arguments were heard this past November and, while reading tea leaves based upon oral arguments is a fraught endeavor, those arguments did not seem to go well for the FTC. It seems likely that the Court will allow firms to raise such challenges prior to final agency action in adjudication, precisely because not allowing them allows the Commission to cause non-redressable harms to the firms it investigates; several years of unconstitutional litigation can be devastating to a business.
The Axon case involves adjudication against a single firm, which raises some different issues from those raised when an agency is developing rules that will affect an entire industry. Most notably, constitutional Due Process protections are implicated when the government takes action against a single firm. It is unlikely that the outcome in Axon—even if as adverse to the FTC as foreseeably possible—would extend to allow firms to challenge an agency rulemaking process on the ground that it exceeds the agency’s statutory (not even constitutional) authority.
But the Commission should nonetheless take the concerns at issue in Axon to heart. If the Supreme Court rules against the Commission in Axon, it will be a strong signal that the Court has concerns about how the Commission is using the authority that Congress has given it. One could even say that it will be the latest in a series of such signals, given that the Court recently struck down the Commission’s Section 13(b) civil-penalty authority. As Scalia notes, the Commission is already pushing the outermost limits of its statutory authority with the rule that it has proposed. The extent of the coming judicial (or congressional) rebuke will be greatly expanded if the courts feel that the agency has abused the rulemaking process to achieve substantive goals that exceed that outermost limit.
The business press generally describes the gig economy that has sprung up around digital platforms like Uber and TaskRabbit as a beneficial phenomenon, “a glass that is almost full.” The gig economy “is an economy that operates flexibly, involving the exchange of labor and resources through digital platforms that actively facilitate buyer and seller matching.”
From the perspective of businesses, major positive attributes of the gig economy include cost-effectiveness (minimizing costs and expenses); labor-force efficiencies (“directly matching the company to the freelancer”); and flexible output production (individualized work schedules and enhanced employee motivation). Workers also benefit through greater independence, enhanced work flexibility (including hours worked), and the ability to earn extra income.
While there are some disadvantages, as well, (worker-commitment questions, business-ethics issues, lack of worker benefits, limited coverage of personal expenses, and worker isolation), there is no question that the gig economy has contributed substantially to the growth and flexibility of the American economy—a major social good. Indeed, “[i]t is undeniable that the gig economy has become an integral part of the American workforce, a trend that has only been accelerated during the” COVID-19 pandemic.
In marked contrast, however, the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Sept. 15 Policy Statement on Enforcement Related to Gig Work (“gig statement” or “statement”) is the story of a glass that is almost empty. The accompanying press release declaring “FTC to Crack Down on Companies Taking Advantage of Gig Workers” (since when is “taking advantage of workers” an antitrust or consumer-protection offense?) puts an entirely negative spin on the gig economy. And while the gig statement begins by describing the nature and large size of the gig economy, it does so in a dispassionate and bland tone. No mention is made of the substantial benefits for consumers, workers, and the overall economy stemming from gig work. Rather, the gig statement quickly adopts a critical perspective in describing the market for gig workers and then addressing gig-related FTC-enforcement priorities. What’s more, the statement deals in very broad generalities and eschews specifics, rendering it of no real use to gig businesses seeking practical guidance.
Most significantly, the gig statement suggests that the FTC should play a significant enforcement role in gig-industry labor questions that fall outside its statutory authority. As such, the statement is fatally flawed as a policy document. It provides no true guidance and should be substantially rewritten or withdrawn.
Gig Statement Analysis
The gig statement’s substantive analysis begins with a negative assessment of gig-firm conduct. It expresses concern that gig workers are being misclassified as independent contractors and are thus deprived “of critical rights [right to organize, overtime pay, health and safety protections] to which they are entitled under law.” Relatedly, gig workers are said to be “saddled with inordinate risks.” Gig firms also “may use transparent algorithms to capture more revenue from customer payments for workers’ services than customers or workers understand.”
Heaven forfend!
The solution offered by the gig statement is “scrutiny of promises gig platforms make, or information they fail to disclose, about the financial proposition of gig work.” No mention is made of how these promises supposedly made to workers about the financial ramifications of gig employment are related to the FTC’s statutory mission (which centers on unfair or deceptive acts or practices affecting consumers or unfair methods of competition).
The gig statement next complains that a “power imbalance” between gig companies and gig workers “may leave gig workers exposed to harms from unfair, deceptive, and anticompetitive practices and is likely to amplify such harms when they occur. “Power imbalance” along a vertical chain has not been a source of serious antitrust concern for decades (and even in the case of the Robinson-Patman Act, the U.S. Supreme Court most recently stressed, in 2005’s Volvo v. Reeder, that harm to interbrand competition is the key concern). “Power imbalances” between workers and employers bear no necessary relation to consumer welfare promotion, which the Supreme Court teaches is the raison d’etre of antitrust. Moreover, the FTC does not explain why unfair or deceptive conduct likely follows from the mere existence of substantial bargaining power. Such an unsupported assertion is not worthy of being included in a serious agency-policy document.
The gig statement then engages in more idle speculation about a supposed relationship between market concentration and the proliferation of unfair and deceptive practices across the gig economy. The statement claims, without any substantiation, that gig companies in concentrated platform markets will be incentivized to exert anticompetitive market power over gig workers, and thereby “suppress wages below competitive rates, reduce job quality, or impose onerous terms on gig workers.” Relatedly, “unfair and deceptive practices by one platform can proliferate across the labor market, creating a race to the bottom that participants in the gig economy, and especially gig workers, have little ability to avoid.” No empirical or theoretical support is advanced for any of these bald assertions, which give the strong impression that the commission plans to target gig-economy companies for enforcement actions without regard to the actual facts on the ground. (By contrast, the commission has in the past developed detailed factual records of competitive and/or consumer-protection problems in health care and other important industry sectors as a prelude to possible future investigations.)
The statement then launches into a description of the FTC’s gig-economy policy priorities. It notes first that “workers may be deprived of the protections of an employment relationship” when gig firms classify them as independent contractors, leading to firms’ “disclosing [of] pay and costs in an unfair and deceptive manner.” What’s more, the FTC “also recognizes that misleading claims [made to workers] about the costs and benefits of gig work can impair fair competition among companies in the gig economy and elsewhere.”
These extraordinary statements seem to be saying that the FTC plans to closely scrutinize gig-economy-labor contract negotiations, based on its distaste for independent contracting (which it believes should be supplanted by employer-employee relationships, a question of labor law, not FTC law). Nowhere is it explained where such a novel FTC exercise of authority comes from, nor how such FTC actions have any bearing on harms to consumer welfare. The FTC’s apparent desire to force employment relationships upon gig firms is far removed from harm to competition or unfair or deceptive practices directed at consumers. Without more of an explanation, one is left to conclude that the FTC is proposing to take actions that are far beyond its statutory remit.
The gig statement next tries to tie the FTC’s new gig program to violations of the FTC Act (“unsubstantiated claims”); the FTC’s Franchise Rule; and the FTC’s Business Opportunity Rule, violations of which “can trigger civil penalties.” The statement, however, lacks any sort of logical, coherent explanation of how the new enforcement program necessarily follows from these other sources of authority. While a few examples of rules-based enforcement actions that have some connection to certain terms of employment may be pointed to, such special cases are a far cry from any sort of general justification for turning the FTC into a labor-contracts regulator.
The statement then moves on to the alleged misuse of algorithmic tools dealing with gig-worker contracts and supervision that may lead to unlawful gig-worker oversight and termination. Once again, the connection of any of this to consumer-welfare harm (from a competition or consumer-protection perspective) is not made.
The statement further asserts that FTC Act consumer-protection violations may arise from “nonnegotiable” and other unfair contracts. In support of such a novel exercise of authority, however, the FTC cites supposedly analogous “unfair” clauses found in consumer contracts with individuals or small-business consumers. It is highly doubtful that these precedents support any FTC enforcement actions involving labor contracts.
Noncompete clauses with individuals are next on the gig statement’s agenda. It is claimed that “[n]on-compete provisions may undermine free and fair labor markets by restricting workers’ ability to obtain competitive offers for their services from existing companies, resulting in lower wages and degraded working conditions. These provisions may also raise barriers to entry for new companies.” The assertion, however, that such clauses may violate Section 1 of the Sherman Act or Section 5 of the FTC Act’s bar on unfair methods of competition, seems dubious, to say the least. Unless there is coordination among companies, these are essentially unilateral contracting practices that may have robust efficiency explanations. Making out these practices to be federal antitrust violations is bad law and bad policy; they are, in any event, subject to a wide variety of state laws.
Even more problematic is the FTC’s claim that a variety of standard (typically efficiency-seeking) contract limitations, such as nondisclosure agreements and liquidated damages clauses, “may be excessive or overbroad” and subject to FTC scrutiny. This preposterous assertion would make the FTC into a second-guesser of common labor contracts (a federal labor-contract regulator, if you will), a role for which it lacks authority and is entirely unsuited. Turning the FTC into a federal labor-contract regulator would impose unjustifiable uncertainty costs on business and chill a host of efficient arrangements. It is hard to take such a claim of power seriously, given its lack of any credible statutory basis.
The final section of the gig statement dealing with FTC enforcement (“Policing Unfair Methods of Competition That Harm Gig Workers”) is unobjectionable, but not particularly informative. It essentially states that the FTC’s black letter legal authority over anticompetitive conduct also extends to gig companies: the FTC has the authority to investigate and prosecute anticompetitive mergers; agreements among competitors to fix terms of employment; no-poach agreements; and acts of monopolization and attempted monopolization. (Tell us something we did not know!)
The fact that gig-company workers may be harmed by such arrangements is noted. The mere page and a half devoted to this legal summary, however, provides little practical guidance for gig companies as to how to avoid running afoul of the law. Antitrust policy statements may be excused if they provided less detailed guidance than antitrust guidelines, but it would be helpful if they did something more than provide a capsule summary of general American antitrust principles. The gig statement does not pass this simple test.
The gig statement closes with a few glittering generalities. Cooperation with other agencies is highlighted (for example, an information-sharing agreement with the National Labor Relations Board is described). The FTC describes an “Equity Action Plan” calling for a focus on how gig-economy antitrust and consumer-protection abuses harm underserved communities and low-wage workers.
The FTC finishes with a request for input from the public and from gig workers about abusive and potentially illegal gig-sector conduct. No mention is made of the fact that the FTC must, of course, conform itself to the statutory limitations on its jurisdiction in the gig sector, as in all other areas of the economy.
Summing Up the Gig Statement
In sum, the critical flaw of the FTC’s gig statement is its focus on questions of labor law and policy (including the question of independent contractor as opposed to employee status) that are the proper purview of federal and state statutory schemes not administered by the Federal Trade Commission. (A secondary flaw is the statement’s unbalanced portrayal of the gig sector, which ignores its beneficial aspects.) If the FTC decides that gig-economy issues deserve particular enforcement emphasis, it should (and, indeed, must) direct its attention to anticompetitive actions and unfair or deceptive acts or practices that harm consumers.
On the antitrust side, that might include collusion among gig companies on the terms offered to workers or perhaps “mergers to monopoly” between gig companies offering a particular service. On the consumer-protection side, that might include making false or materially misleading statements to consumers about the terms under which they purchase gig-provided services. (It would be conceivable, of course, that some of those statements might be made, unwittingly or not, by gig independent contractors, at the behest of the gig companies.)
The FTC also might carry out gig-industry studies to identify particular prevalent competitive or consumer-protection harms. The FTC should not, however, seek to transform itself into a gig-labor-market enforcer and regulator, in defiance of its lack of statutory authority to play this role.
Conclusion
The FTC does, of course, have a legitimate role to play in challenging unfair methods of competition and unfair acts or practices that undermine consumer welfare wherever they arise, including in the gig economy. But it does a disservice by focusing merely on supposed negative aspects of the gig economy and conjuring up a gig-specific “parade of horribles” worthy of close commission scrutiny and enforcement action.
Many of the “horribles” cited may not even be “bads,” and many of them are, in any event, beyond the proper legal scope of FTC inquiry. There are other federal agencies (for example, the National Labor Relations Board) whose statutes may prove applicable to certain problems noted in the gig statement. In other cases, statutory changes may be required to address certain problems noted in the statement (assuming they actually are problems). The FTC, and its fellow enforcement agencies, should keep in mind, of course, that they are not Congress, and wishing for legal authority to deal with problems does not create it (something the federal judiciary fully understands).
In short, the negative atmospherics that permeate the gig statement are unnecessary and counterproductive; if anything, they are likely to convince at least some judges that the FTC is not the dispassionate finder of fact and enforcer of law that it claims to be. In particular, the judiciary is unlikely to be impressed by the FTC’s apparent effort to insert itself into questions that lie far beyond its statutory mandate.
The FTC should withdraw the gig statement. If, however, it does not, it should revise the statement in a manner that is respectful of the limits on the commission’s legal authority, and that presents a more dispassionate analysis of gig-economy business conduct.
It’s been a busy summer, and promises to be a busier fall. So the UMC Roundup is on hiatus this week.
But because the news doesn’t stop even when we do, we’re using this week’s Roundup to announce a call for submissions relating to the FTC’s ANPR on Commercial Surveillance and Data Security. Submissions relating to various aspects of the ANPR will be considered for publication as part of our ongoing FTC UMC Symposium. We have already previously offered some discussion of the ANPR on Truth on the Market, here and here.
Posts should substantively engage with the ANPR and will generally be between 1,800-4,000 words. We are interested in all topics and perspectives. Given that this is the UMC symposium, we are particularly interested in submissions that explore the competition aspects of the ANPR, including the mysterious Footnote 47 and the procedural and substantive overlaps between the FTC’s UDAP and UMC authorities that run throughout the ANPR.
Submissions should be sent to Keith Fierro (kfierro@laweconcenter.org). To maximize the likelihood that we will publish your submission, we encourage potential authors to submit a brief explanation of the proposed topic prior to writing. Because selected submissions will be published as part of the ongoing UMC Symposium, we anticipate beginning to publish selected submissions immediately and on a rolling basis. For full consideration, contributions should be submitted prior to Sept. 8, 2022.
The FTC UMC Roundup, part of the Truth on the Market FTC UMC Symposium, is a weekly roundup of news relating to the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust and Unfair Methods of Competition authority. If you would like to receive this and other posts relating to these topics, subscribe to the RSS feed here. If you have news items you would like to suggest for inclusion, please mail them to us at ghurwitz@laweconcenter.org and/or kfierro@laweconcenter.org.
[This post is a contribution to Truth on the Market‘s continuing digital symposium “FTC Rulemaking on Unfair Methods of Competition.”You can find other posts at thesymposium page here. Truth on the Market also invites academics, practitioners, and other antitrust/regulation commentators to send us 1,500-4,000 word responses for potential inclusion in the symposium.]
In a recent op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, Svetlana Gans and Eugene Scalia look at three potential traps the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) could trigger if it pursues the aggressive rulemaking agenda many have long been expecting. From their opening:
FTC Chairman Lina Khan has Rooseveltian ambitions for the agency. … Within weeks the FTC is expected to begin a blizzard of rule-makings that will include restrictions on employment noncompete agreements and the practices of technology companies.
If Ms. Khan succeeds, she will transform the FTC’s regulation of American business. But there’s a strong chance this regulatory blitz will fail. The FTC is a textbook case for how federal agencies could be affected by the re-examination of administrative law under way at the Supreme Court.
The first pitfall into which the FTC might fall, Gans and Scalia argue, is the “major questions” doctrine. Recently illuminated in the Supreme Court’s opinion in West Virginia v. EPAdecision, the doctrine holds that federal agencies cannot enact regulations of vast economic and political significance without clear congressional authorization. The sorts of rules the FTC appears to be contemplating “would run headlong into” major questions, Gans and Scalia write, a position shared by several contributors to Truth on the Market‘s recent symposium on the potential for FTC rulemakings on unfair methods of competition (UMC).
The second trap the authors expect might trip up an ambitious FTC is the major questions doctrine’s close cousin: the nondelegation doctrine. The nondelegation doctrine holds that there are limits to how much authority Congress can delegate to a federal agency, even if it does so clearly.
Curiously, as Gans and Scalia note, the last time the Supreme Court invoked the nondelegation doctrine involved regulations to implement “codes of fair competition”—nearly identical, on their face, to the commission’s current interest in rules to prohibit unfair methods of competition. That last case, Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, is more than 80 years old. The doctrine has since lain dormant for multiple generations. But in recent years, several justice have signaled their openness to reinvigorating the doctrine. As Gans and Scalia note, “[a]n aggressive FTC competition rule could be a tempting target” for them.
Finally, the authors anticipate an overly aggressive FTC may find itself entangled in yet a thorny web wrapped around the very heart of the administrative state: the constitutionality of so-called independent agencies. Again, the relevant constitutional doctrine giving rise to these agencies results from another 1935 case involving the FTC itself: Humphrey’s Executor v. United States. While the Court in that opinion upheld the notion that Congress can create agencies led by officials who operate independently of direct presidential control, conservative justices have long questioned the doctrine’s legitimacy and the Roberts court, in particularly, has trimmed its outer limits. An overly aggressive FTC might present an opportunity to further check the independence of these agencies.
While it remains unclear the precise rules the FTC seek try to develop using its UMC authority, the clearest signs are that it will focus first on labor issues, such as emerging research around labor monopsony and firms’ use of noncompete clauses. Indeed, Eric Posner, who joined the U.S. Justice Department Antitrust Division earlier this year as counsel on these issues, recently acknowledged that: “There is this very close and complicated relationship between labor law and antitrust law that has to be maintained.”
If the FTC were to upset this relationship, such as by using its UMC authority either to circumvent the National Labor Relations Board in addressing competition concerns or to assist the NLRB in exceeding its own statutory authority, it would be unsurprising for the courts to exercise their constitutional role as a check on a rogue agency.
This week’s news can be divided into PM and AM editions – pre-Manchin and after-Manchin. Anything that seemed possible in Congress before Senators Manchin (D-WV) and Schumer (D-NY) announced their agreement on a reconciliation bill that addresses climate, energy, and tax issues now seems far less likely. Congress hath no fury like a McConnell scorned.
Yet for every Manchin in the news there is an equal and opposite Khan. This week’s headline is the FTC’s suitto block Meta from acquiring Within, a virtual-reality (ahem, metaverse) fitness startup – a suit that pushes the bounds of antitrust law so far that even the New York Times sounds skeptical. The FTC is making two core allegations. They are difficult to summarize in a few words, but that’s what I have: First, that by buying an existing company instead of developing its own competing product, Meta is lessening competition. In other words, by not affirmatively increasing competition Meta is lessening competition. And, second, that Meta’s stated intent to enter this market would have already discouraged new entry, so allowing this acquisition would further lessen competition. In other words, potential entry lessens competition.
It is hard to overstate how incoherent these theories are. At most pithy, they fail to recognize that barriers to exit are barriers to entry. If the FTC is successful in this case, it would kneecap American innovation and reduce choice online in a single act. And winning this case would require breaking basic, longstanding, antitrust doctrines. Just imagine the market definition exercise! As Mark Meador notes, it’s a strange strategy to bring an antitrust case when you “describe the industry as “characterized by a high degree of growth and innovation” in your press release.”
[Updated Friday morning to add:] Leah Nylen reports that FTC staff recommended against challenging this acquisition but were overruled by Khan. This unfortunately offers further support for Khan’s assertion that M&A “can really degrade working conditions.“
Chair Khan’s FTC has been a cypher when it comes to Big Tech. Since being appointed, she has consistently talked a big game. But as Commissioner Wilson notes, the FTC has let four similar deals go through with Meta alone. And now Chair Khan is going all-in with the first hand she plays, bringing a case that will drain the Commission’s resources and distract it from other matters for a significant portion of what remains of President Biden’s first term.
Looking back to the pre-Manchin news, Senator Schumer spent the early part of the week being harassedby protesters and colleagues from the left and the right, all demanding that he bring the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA) to the floor for a vote. But Senator Schumer seems to have said the quiet part out loud: he doesn’t believe that the bill has the votes to pass. And with the August recess looming and the midterms not waiting far behind, he doesn’t have the floor time to waste on bills that won’t pass.
Well, that and he might understand something that Senator Klobuchar (D-MN), AICOA’s champion, doesn’t seem to have figured out: As Neil Chilson notes, Americans aren’t all that worried about big tech and, especially in an period of high inflation, actually like the business practices AICOA would make illegal. (One wonders if that’s how he persuaded Manchin to support the reconciliation bill, showing him the polls showing support for climate legislation – that and offering cookies.) He’s not alone in understanding that the bill faces faltering support.
Finding stories about AICOA this week – none of them positive – is like shooting fish in a barrel. See here, here, here, here, here, and everything cited above. We’ve been calling AICOA dead bill walking for weeks. But that now seems to be the safe take.
None of this seems likely to stop Senator Klobuchar from trying to make fetch happen. Politico reported this morning that she plans to hold an antitrust hearing next week but yet doesn’t have any witnesses lined up to provide a backdrop for opening statements.
What else is in the news? The previously-reported MOU between the FTC and NLRB apparently has a third counterparty: the Department of Justice is also in on the action. Steve Salop and Jennifer Sturiale have an interesting piece arguing, in light of West Virginia v. EPA and the stalled state of AICOA, that the FTC should adopt new … wait for it … UMC enforcement guidelines. The piece is thoughtful and worth reading. It is curious to note, however, that while they aspire to put forth a viable “middle-of-the-road” approach, they recognize that this is not that. Not too long ago there actually was a bipartisan UMC policy statement. If Salop and Sturiale want to propose “middle of the road” UMC guidelines that might have bipartisan support they should probably start with the 2015 UMC guidelines that actually were adopted with bipartisan support.
Looking for something to read? I turn to some self-preferencing for this week’s recommended lunchtime or community reading. Truth on the Market, the very same blog that hosts the FTC UMC Roundup, is currently running a symposium on Antitrust’s Uncertain Future: Visions of Competition in the New Regulatory Landscape. While some of the pieces are traditional, scholarly blog posts, others have chosen different literary genres to explore this imagined future, such as short stories, parables, sci-fi inspired pieces – even poems or song lyrics. Not only is it entertaining and insightful: it’s the week’s must-read.
The FTC UMC Roundup, part of the Truth on the Market FTC UMC Symposium, is a weekly roundup of news relating to the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust and Unfair Methods of Competition authority. If you would like to receive this and other posts relating to these topics, subscribe to the RSS feed here. If you have news items you would like to suggest for inclusion, please mail them to us at ghurwitz@laweconcenter.org and/or kfierro@laweconcenter.org.
[On Monday, June 27, Concurrenceshosted a conference on the Rulemaking Authority of the Federal Trade Commission.This conference featured the work of contributors to a new book on the subject edited by Professor Dan Crane. Several of these authors have previously contributed to the Truth on the Market FTC UMC Symposium. We are pleased to be able to share with you excerpts or condensed versions of chapters from this book prepared by authors of of those chapters. Our thanks and compliments to Dan and Concurrences for bringing together an outstanding event and set of contributors and for supporting our sharing them with you here.]
[The post below was authored by former Federal Trade Commission Acting Chair Maureen K. Ohlhausen and former FTC Senior Attorney Ben Rossen.]
Introduction
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has long steered the direction of competition law by engaging in case-by-case enforcement of the FTC Act’s prohibition on unfair methods of competition (UMC). Recently, some have argued that the FTC’s exclusive reliance on case-by-case adjudication is too long and arduous a route and have urged the commission to take a shortcut by invoking its purported authority to promulgate UMC rules under Section 6(g) of the Federal Trade Commission Act.
Proponents of UMC rulemaking rely on National Petroleum Refiners Association v. FTC, a 1973 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit that upheld the commission’s authority to issue broad legislative rules under the FTC Act. They argue that the case provides a clear path to UMC rules and that Congress effectively ratified the D.C. Circuit’s decision when it enacted detailed rulemaking procedures governing unfair or deceptive acts or practices (UDAP) in the Magnuson Moss Warranty-Federal Trade Commission Improvement Act of 1975 (Magnuson-Moss).
The premise of this argument is fundamentally incorrect, because modern courts reject the type of permissive statutory analysis applied in National Petroleum Refiners. Moreover, contemporaneous congressional reaction to National Petroleum Refiners was not to embrace broad FTC rulemaking, but rather to put in strong guardrails on FTC UDAP rulemaking. Further, the congressional history of the particular FTC rule at issue—the Octane Ratings Rule—also points in the direction of a lack of broad UMC rulemaking, as Congress eventually adopted the rule solely as a UDAP provision, with heightened restrictions on FTC rulemaking.
Thus, the road to UMC rulemaking, which the agency wisely never tried to travel down in the almost 50 years since National Petroleum Refiners, is essentially a dead end. If the agency tries to go that route, it will be an unfortunate detour from its clear statutory direction to engage in case-by-case enforcement of Section 5.
Broad UMC-Rulemaking Authority Contradicts the History and Evolution of the FTC’s Authority
The FTC Act grants the commission broad authority to investigate unfair methods of competition and unfair and deceptive acts or practices across much of the American economy. The FTC’s administrative adjudicative authority under “Part 3” is central to the FTC’s mission of preserving fair competition and protecting consumers, as reflected by the comprehensive adjudicative framework established in Section 5 of the FTC Act. Section 6, meanwhile, details the commission’s investigative powers to collect confidential business information and conduct industry studies.
The original FTC Act contained only one sentence describing the agency’s ability to make rules, buried inconspicuously among various other provisions. Section 6(g) provided that the FTC would have authority “[f]rom time to time [to] classify corporations and . . . to make rules and regulations for the purpose of carrying out the provisions of this [Act].”[1]Unlike the detailed administrative scheme in Section 5, the FTC Act fails to provide for any sanctions for violations of rules promulgated under Section 6 or to otherwise specify that such rules would carry the force of law. This minimal delegation of power arguably conferred the right to issue procedural but not substantive rules.
Consistent with the understanding that Congress did not authorize substantive rulemaking, the FTC made no attempt to promulgate rules with the force of law for nearly 50 years after it was created, and at various times indicated that it lacked the authority to do so.
In 1962, the agency for the first time began to promulgate consumer-protection trade-regulation rules (TRRs), citing its authority under Section 6(g). Although these early TRRs plainly addressed consumer-protection matters, the agency frequently described violations of the rule as both an unfair method of competition and an unfair or deceptive trade practice. As the commission itself has observed, “[n]early all of the rules that the Commission actually promulgated under Section 6(g) were consumer protection rules.”
In fact, in the more than 100 years of the FTC Act, the agency has only once issued a solely competition rule. In 1967, the commission promulgated the Men and Boys’ Tailored Clothing Rule pursuant to authority under the Clayton Act, which prohibited apparel suppliers from granting discriminatory-advertising allowances that limited small retailers’ ability to compete. However, the rule was never enforced or subject to challenge and was subsequently repealed.
Soon after, the FTC promulgated the octane-ratings rule at issue in National Petroleum Refiners. Proponents of UMC rulemaking, such as former FTC Commissioner Rohit Chopra and current Chair Lina Khan, point to the case as evidence that the commission retains the power to promulgate substantive competition rules, governed only by the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and, with respect to interpretations of UMC, entitled to Chevron deference. They argue that UMC rulemaking would provide significant benefits by providing clear notice to market participants about what the law requires, relieving the steep expert costs and prolonged trials common to antitrust adjudications, and fostering a “transparent and participatory process” that would provide meaningful public participation.
With Khan at the helm of the FTC, the agency has already begun to pave the way for new UMC rulemakings. For example, President Joe Biden’s Executive Order on promoting competition called on the commission to promulgate UMC rules to address noncompete clauses and pay-for-delay settlements, among other issues. Further, as one of Khan’s first actions as chair, the commission rescinded—without replacing—its bipartisan Statement of Enforcement Principles Regarding “Unfair Methods of Competition” Under Section 5 of the FTC Act. More recently, the commission’s Statement of Regulatory Priorities stated that the FTC “will consider developing both unfair-methods-of-competition rulemakings as well as rulemakings to define with specificity unfair or deceptive acts or practices.” This foray into UMC rulemaking is likely to take the FTC down a dead-end road.
The Signs Are Clear: National Petroleum Refiners Does Not Comport with Modern Principles of Statutory Interpretation
The FTC’s authority to conduct rulemaking under Section 6(g) has been tested in court only once, in National Petroleum Refiners, where the D.C. Circuit upheld the commission’s authority to promulgate a UDAP and UMC rule requiring the disclosure of octane ratings on gasoline pumps. The court found that Section 6(g) “clearly states that the Commission ‘may’ make rules and regulations for the purpose of carrying out the provisions of Section 5” and liberally construed the term ‘rules and regulations’ based on the background and purpose of the FTC Act.” The court’s opinion rested, in part, on pragmatic concerns about the benefits that rulemaking provides to fulfilling the agency’s mission, emphasizing the “invaluable resource-saving flexibility” it provides and extolling the benefits of rulemaking over case-by-case adjudication when developing agency policy.
National Petroleum Refiners reads today like an anachronism. Few modern courts would agree that an ambiguous grant of rulemaking authority should be construed to give agencies the broadest possible powers so that they will have flexibility in determining how to effectuate their statutory mandates. The Supreme Court has never adopted this approach and recent decisions strongly suggest it would decline to do so if presented the opportunity.
The D.C. Circuit’s opinion is in clear tension with the “elephants-in-mouseholes” doctrine first described by the U.S. Supreme Court in Whitman v. Am. Trucking Ass’n, because it largely ignored the significance of the FTC Act’s detailed adjudicative framework. The D.C. Circuit’s reasoning—that Congress buried sweeping legislative-rulemaking authority in a vague, ancillary provision, alongside the ability to “classify corporations”—stands in direct conflict with the Supreme Court’s admonition in Whitman.
Modern courts would also look to interpret the structure of the FTC Act to produce a coherent enforcement scheme. For instance, in AMG Capital Management v. FTC, the Supreme Court struck down the FTC’s use of Section 13(b) to obtain equitable monetary relief, in part, because the FTC Act elsewhere imposes specific limitations on the commission’s authority to obtain monetary relief. Unlike National Petroleum Refiners, which lauded the benefits and efficiencies of rulemaking for the agency’s mission, the AMG court reasoned: “Our task here is not to decide whether [the FTC’s] substitution of § 13(b) for the administrative procedure contained in § 5 and the consumer redress available under § 19 is desirable. Rather, it is to answer a more purely legal question” of whether Congress granted authority or not. The same rationale applies to UMC rulemaking.
The unanimous AMG decision was no judicial detour, and the Supreme Court has routinelyposted clear road signs that Congress is expected “to speak clearly when authorizing an agency to exercise powers of vast economic and political significance,” as UMC rulemaking would do. Since 2000, the Court has increasingly applied the “major questions doctrine” to limit the scope of congressional delegation to the administrative state in areas of major political or economic importance. For example, in FDA v. Brown & Williamson, the Supreme Court declined to grant Chevron deference to an FDA rule permitting the agency to regulate nicotine and cigarettes. Crucial to the Court’s analysis was that the FDA’s rule contradicted the agency’s own view of its authority dating back to 1914, while asserting jurisdiction over a significant portion of the American economy. In Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA, the Court invoked the major questions doctrine to strike down the Environmental Protection Agency’s greenhouse-gas emissions standards as an impermissible interpretation of the Clean Air Act, finding that “EPA’s interpretation is [] unreasonable because it would bring about an enormous and transformative expansion in [the] EPA’s regulatory authority without clear congressional authorization.”
Most recently, in West Virginia v. EPAthe Court relied on the major questions doctrine to strike down EPA emissions rules that would have imposed billions of dollars in compliance costs on power plants, concluding that Congress had not provided “clear congressional authorization” for the rules despite explicitly authorizing the agency to set emissions levels for existing plants. Because broad UMC-rulemaking authority under Section 6(g) is similarly a question of potentially “vast economic and political significance,” and would also represent a significant departure from past agency precedent, the FTC’s efforts to promulgate such rules would likely be met by a flashing red light.
Finally, while National Petroleum Refiners lauded the benefits of rulemaking authority and emphasized its usefulness for carrying out the FTC’s mission, the Supreme Court has since clarified that “[h]owever sensible (or not)” an interpretation may be, “a reviewing court’s task is to apply the text of the statute, not to improve upon it.” Whatever benefits rulemaking authority may confer on the FTC, they cannot justify departure from the text of the FTC Act.
The Road Not Taken: Congress Did Not Ratify UMC-Rulemaking Authority and the FTC Did Not Assert It
Two years after National Petroleum Refiners, Congress enacted the Magnuson-Moss Warranty-Federal Trade Commission Improvement Act of 1975 (Magnuson-Moss). Section 202(a) of Magnuson-Moss amended the FTC Act to add a new Section 18 that, for the first time, gave the FTC express authority to issue UDAP rules, while imposing heightened procedural requirements for such rulemaking. Magnuson-Moss does not expressly address UMC rulemaking. Instead, it says only that Section 18 “shall not affect any authority of the Commission to prescribe rules (including interpretive rules), and general statements of policy, with respect to unfair methods of competition in or affecting commerce.” Section 6(g) currently authorizes the FTC “(except as provided in [section 18] of this title) to make rules and regulations for the purpose of carrying out the provisions of this subchapter.”
UMC-rulemaking proponents argue Magnuson-Moss effectively ratified National Petroleum Refiners and affirmed the commission’s authority with respect to substantive UMC rules. This revisionist interpretation is incorrect. The savings provision in Section 18(a)(2) that preserves “any authority” (as opposed to “the” authority) of the commission to prescribe UMC rules reflects, at most, an agnostic view on whether the FTC, in fact, possesses such authority. Rather, it suggests that whatever authority may exist for UMC rulemaking was unchanged by Section 18 and that Congress left the question open for the courts to resolve. The FTC itself appears to have recognized this uncertainty, as evidenced by the fact that it has never even attempted to promulgate a UMC rule in the nearly 50 years following the enactment of Magnuson-Moss.
Congressional silence on UMC hardly endorses the commission’s authority and is not likely to persuade an appellate court today. To rely on congressional acquiescence to a judicial interpretation, there must be “overwhelming evidence” that Congress considered and rejected the “precise issue” before the court. Although Congress considered adopting National Petroleum Refiners, it ultimately took no action on the FTC’s UMC-rulemaking authority. Hardly the “overwhelming evidence” required to read National Petroleum Refiners into the law.
The Forgotten Journey: The History of the Octane-Ratings Rule Reinforces the FTC’s Lack of UMC Rulemaking Authority
Those who argue that National Petroleum Refiners is still good law and that Congress silently endorsed UMC rulemaking have shown no interest in how the journey of the octane-ratings rule eventually ended. The FTC’s 1971 octane-ratings rule declared the failure to post octane disclosures on gasoline pumps both an unfair method of competition and an unfair or deceptive practice. But what has remained unexplored in the debate over FTC UMC rulemaking is what happened to the rule after the D.C. Circuit’s decision upheld rulemaking under Section 6(g), and what that tells us about congressional and agency views on UMC authority.
The octane-ratings rule upheld by the D.C. Circuit never took effect and was ultimately replaced when Congress enacted the Petroleum Marketing Practices Act (PMPA), Title II of which addressed octane-disclosure requirements and directed the FTC to issue new rules under the PMPA. But despite previous claims by the FTC that the rule drew on both UDAP and UMC authority, Congress declined to provide any authority beyond UDAP. While it is impossible to say whether Congress concluded that UMC rulemaking was unwise, illegal, or simply unnecessary, the PMPA—passed just two years after Magnuson-Moss—suggests that UMC rulemaking did not survive the enactment of Section 18. A brief summary of the rule’s meandering journey follows.
After the D.C. Circuit remanded National Petroleum Refiners, the district court ordered the FTC to complete an environmental-impact statement. While that analysis was pending, Congress began consideration of the PMPA. After its enactment, the commission understood Congress to have intended the requirements of Title II of the PMPA to replace those of the original octane-ratings rule. The FTC treated the enactment of the PMPA as effectively repealing the rule.
Section 203(a) of the PMPA gave the FTC rulemaking power to enforce compliance with Title II of the PMPA. Testimony in House subcommittee hearings centered on whether the legislation should direct the FTC to enact a TRR on octane ratings under expedited procedures that would be authorized by the legislation, or whether Congress should enact its own statutory requirements. Ultimately, Congress adopted a statutory definition of octane ratings (identical to the method adopted by the FTC in its 1971 rule) and granted the FTC rulemaking authority under the APA to update definitions and prescribe different procedures for determining fuel-octane ratings. Congress also specified that certain rules—such as those requiring manufacturers to display octane requirements on motor vehicles—would have heightened rulemaking procedures, such as rulemaking on the record after a hearing.
Notably, the PMPA specifically provides that violations of the statute, or any rule promulgated under the statute, “shall be an unfair or deceptive act or practice in or affecting commerce.” Although Section 203(d)(3) of the PMPA specifically exempts the FTC from the procedural requirements under Section 18, it does not simply revert to Section 6(g) or otherwise leave open a path for UMC rulemaking.
The record makes clear, however, that Congress was aware of FTC’s desire to claim UMC authority in connection with the octane-ratings rule, as FTC officials testified in legislative hearings that UMC authority was necessary to regulate octane ratings. After Magnuson-Moss was enacted, however, neither Congress nor the FTC tried to include UMC rulemaking in the PMPA. In a written statement reflecting the FTC’s views on the PMPA incorporated in the House report, the FTC described its original octane-ratings rule as UDAP only.[2] While not dispositive, the FTC’s apparent abandonment of its request for UMC authority after Magnuson-Moss, and Congress’ decision to limit the PMPA exclusively to UDAP, certainly suggests that UMC did not survive National Petroleum Refiners and that Congress did not endorse FTC UMC rulemaking.
Conclusion
The FTC appears poised to embark on a journey of broad, legislative-style competition rulemaking under Section 6(g) of the FTC Act. This would be a dead end. UMC rulemaking, rather than advancing clarity and certainty about what types of conduct constitute unfair methods of competition, would very likely be viewed by the courts as an illegal left turn. It would also be a detour for the agency from its core mission of case-by-case expert adjudication of the FTC Act—which, given limited agency resources, could result in a years-long escapade that significantly detracts from overall enforcement. The FTC should instead seek to build on the considerable success it has seen in recent years with administrative adjudications, both in terms of winning on appeal and in shaping the development of antitrust law overall by creating citable precedent in key areas.
[1] H. Rep. No. 95-161, at 45, Appendix II, Federal Trade Commission—Agency Views, Statement of Federal Trade Commission by Christian S. White, Asst. Director for Special Statutes (Feb. 23, 1977).
[2] 38 Stat. 722 § 6(g), codified as amended at 15 U.S.C. § 46(g).
Happy Independence Day Week! Having started off with the holiday, this has been a relatively slow week on the antitrust front in the United States. But never fear, Europe is here to help fill out the weekly news roundup. And, even on a slow week there is plenty in the news domestically. Perhaps more important: everyone working on FTC and antitrust issues should take advantage of these respites when the come – any calm most likely is a harbinger of a storm to come.
This week’s headline is the passage of the Digital Markets Act (DMA)and Digital Services Act (DSA) by the European Parliament. The DMA has often been compared to the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA) – as of this week their biggest difference is that the DMA now is law while AICOA’s fate continues to appear fraught. For more details on the substance the DMA, we’ve discussed it on here on Truth on the Market, and both Axios and the Chamber of Commerce offer overviews.
Also on the European front, Europeans are beginning to reckon with the fact that soon Facebook may cease operations in Europe due to the bloc’s privacy rules. For pro-privacy regulators this may be viewed as a win. The rest of Europe was unavailable for comment (likely due to European privacy laws).
Back in the states the biggest news continues to be fallout from the Supreme Court’s embrace of the major questions doctrine. After a few days of misreporting on the opinion in West Virginia v. EPA as preventing the EPA from regulating greenhouse gasses, the media is now realizing that the import of the opinion goes to broader questions of the administrative state – and that it could impact tech regulation in particular.
Sophisticated thinkers have seen the potential impact of the case since before it was decided. In the days since they have been exploring the scope of the ruling and how the lower courts will implement it, discussing its implications for big tech, debating whether it will or will notlimit the FCC’s net neutrality authority (answer: it will). And as numerous posts made as part of this TOTM FTC UMC Symposium have argued, it will likely substantially limit the FTC’s UMC rulemaking authority.
One thing I have wondered is how agencies will respond to the MQD in their rulemaking. Agencies often discuss the importance of their rules in an effort to justify them. Tom Wheeler was fond of discussing the Internet as the “most important network in the history of Man.” Arguing that the costs of regulatory action are very high helps to sell the benefits of regulation as substantial. But now, arguing that the costs of inaction are high might also make it easier to argue that the question being addressed in a major one – of vast political or economic significance. Will we start to see agencies downplay the importance of their work?
As usual, we can’t not have some updates on AICOA. The most salient update may be the lack of update. While Senator Klobuchar (D-MN) continues to push the bill forward, Leader Schumer (D-NY) has no apparent interest in bringing it to the floor. And even if it gets through the Senate, there may be trouble waitingin the House? Beyond that, this week saw both Zach Graves get off the fence and speak out against AICOA.
Quick hits: Protocolreports the CFPB is hoping to hire 25 technologists to help it wage war on the tech industry. Bloomberg reports the FTC is toying with the Robinson-Patman Act. And the FTC brings another right-to-repair action, this time against Weber, to prohibit warranties that are voided by independent repairs.
What you missed, What to watch? Last week’s Federalist Society discussion of Biden’s Antitrust Agenda: Mission Creep or Mission Achieved was a must-watch. Hope you didn’t miss it! If you did, you can redeem yourself by making it to AEI’s discussion with FTC Commissioner Noah Phillips on Crossing the Consumer Welfare Rubicon.
[On Monday, June 27, Concurrenceshosted a conference on the Rulemaking Authority of the Federal Trade Commission.This conference featured the work of contributors to a new book on the subject edited by Professor Dan Crane. Several of these authors have previously contributed to the Truth on the Market FTC UMC Symposium. We are pleased to be able to share with you excerpts or condensed versions of chapters from this book prepared by authors of of those chapters. Our thanks and compliments to Dan and Concurrences for bringing together an outstanding event and set of contributors and for supporting our sharing them with you here.]
[The post below was authored by former Federal Trade Commission Acting Chair Maureen K. Ohlhausen and former Assistant U.S. Attorney General James F. Rill.]
Since its founding in 1914, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has held a unique and multifaceted role in the U.S. administrative state and the economy. It possesses powerful investigative and information-gathering powers, including through compulsory processes; a multi-layered administrative-adjudication process to prosecute “unfair methods of competition (UMC)” (and later, “unfair and deceptive acts and practices (UDAP),” as well); and an important role in educating and informing the business community and the public. What the FTC cannot be, however, is a legislature with broad authority to expand, contract, or alter the laws that Congress has tasked it with enforcing.
Recent proposals for aggressive UMC rulemaking, predicated on Section 6(g) of the FTC Act, would have the effect of claiming just this sort of quasi-legislative power for the commission based on a thin statutory reed authorizing “rules and regulations for the purpose of carrying out the provisions of” that act. This usurpation of power would distract the agency from its core mission of case-by-case expert application of the FTC Act through administrative adjudication. It would also be inconsistent with the explicit grants of rulemaking authority that Congress has given the FTC and run afoul of the congressional and constitutional “guard rails” that cabin the commission’s authority.
FTC’s Unique Role as an Administrative Adjudicator
The FTC’s Part III adjudication authority is central to its mission of preserving fair competition in the U.S. economy. The FTC has enjoyed considerable success in recent years with its administrative adjudications, both in terms of winning on appeal and in shaping the development of antitrust law overall (not simply a separate category of UMC law) by creating citable precedent in key areas. However, as a result of its July 1, 2021, open meeting and President Joe Biden’s “Promoting Competition in the American Economy” executive order, the FTC appears to be headed for another misadventure in response to calls to claim authority for broad, legislative-style “unfair methods of competition” rulemaking out of Section 6(g) of the FTC Act. The commission recently took a significant and misguided step toward this goal by rescinding—without replacing—its bipartisan Statement of Enforcement Principles Regarding “Unfair Methods of Competition” Under Section 5 of the FTC Act, divorcing (at least in the commission majority’s view) Section 5 from prevailing antitrust-law principles and leaving the business community without any current guidance as to what the commission considers “unfair.”
FTC’s Rulemaking Authority Was Meant to Complement its Case-by-Case Adjudicatory Authority, Not Supplant It
As described below, broad rulemaking of this sort would likely encounter stiff resistance in the courts, due to its tenuous statutory basis and the myriad constitutional and institutional problems it creates. But even aside from the issue of legality, such a move would distract the FTC from its fundamental function as an expert case-by-case adjudicator of competition issues. It would be far too tempting for the commission to simply regulate its way to the desired outcome, bypassing all neutral arbiters along the way. And by seeking to promulgate such rules through abbreviated notice-and-comment rulemaking, the FTC would be claiming extremely broad substantive authority to directly regulate business conduct across the economy with relatively few of the procedural protections that Congress felt necessary for the FTC’s trade-regulation rules in the consumer-protection context. This approach risks not only a diversion of scarce agency resources from meaningful adjudication opportunities, but also potentially a loss of public legitimacy for the commission should it try to exempt itself from these important rulemaking safeguards.
FTC Lacks Authority to Promulgate Legislative-Style Competition Rules
The FTC has historically been hesitant to exercise UMC rulemaking authority under Section 6(g) of the FTC Act, which simply states that FTC shall have power “[f]rom time to time to classify corporations and … to make rules and regulations for the purpose of carrying out the provisions” of the FTC Act. Current proponents of UMC rulemaking argue for a broad interpretation of this clause, allowing for legally binding rulemaking on any issue subject to the FTC’s jurisdiction. But the FTC’s past reticence to exercise such sweeping powers is likely due to the existence of significant and unresolved questions of the FTC’s UMC rulemaking authority from both a statutory and constitutional perspective.
Absence of Statutory Authority
The FTC’s authority to conduct rulemaking under Section 6(g) has been tested in court only once, in National Petroleum Refiners Association v. FTC. In that case, the FTC succeeded in classifying the failure to post octane ratings on gasoline pumps as “an unfair method of competition.” The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit found that Section 6(g) did confer this rulemaking authority. But Congress responded two years later with the Magnuson-Moss Warranty-Federal Trade Commission Improvement Act of 1975, which created a new rulemaking scheme that applied exclusively to the FTC’s consumer-protection rules. This act expressly excluded rulemaking on unfair methods of competition from its authority. The statute’s provision that UMC rulemaking is unaffected by the legislation manifests strong congressional design that such rules would be governed not by Magnuson-Moss, but by the FTC Act itself. The reference in Magnuson-Moss to the statute not affecting “any authority” of the FTC to engage in UMC rulemaking—as opposed to “the authority”— reflects Congress’ agnostic view on whether the FTC possessed any such authority. It simply means that whatever authority exists for UMC rulemaking, the Magnuson-Moss provisions do not affect it, and Congress left the question open for the courts to resolve.
Proponents of UMC rulemaking argue that Magnuson-Moss left the FTC’s competition-rulemaking authority intact and entitled to Chevrondeference. But, as has been pointed out by many commentators over the decades, that would be highly incongruous, given that National Petroleum Refiners dealt with both UMC and UDAP authority under Section 6(g), yet Congress’ reaction was to provide specific UDAP rulemaking authority and expressly take no position on UMC rulemaking. As further evidenced by the fact that the FTC has never attempted to promulgate a UMC rule in the years following enactment of Magnuson-Moss, the act is best read as declining to endorse the FTC’s UMC rulemaking authority. Instead, it leaves the question open for future consideration by the courts.
Turning to the terms of the FTC Act, modern statutory interpretation takes a far different approach than the court in National Petroleum Refiners, which discounted the significance of Section 5’s enumeration of adjudication as the means for restraining UMC and UDAP, reasoning that Section 5(b) did not use limiting language and that Section 6(g) provides a source of substantive rulemaking authority. This approach is in clear tension with the elephants-in-mouseholes doctrine developed by the Supreme Court in recent years. The FTC’s recent claim of broad substantive UMC rulemaking authority based on the absence of limiting language and a vague, ancillary provision authorizing rulemaking alongside the ability to “classify corporations” stands in conflict with the Court’s admonition in Whitman v. American Trucking Association. The Court in AMG Capital Management, LLC v. FTCrecently applied similar principles in the context of the FTC’s authority under the FTC Act. Here,the Court emphasized “the historical importance of administrative proceedings” and declined to give the FTC a shortcut to desirable outcomes in federal court. Similarly, granting broad UMC-rulemaking authority to the FTC would permit it to circumvent the FTC Act’s defining feature of case-by-case adjudications. Applying the principles enunciated in Whitman and AMG, Section 5 is best read as specifying the sole means of UMC enforcement (adjudication), and Section 6(g) is best understood as permitting the FTC to specify how it will carry out its adjudicative, investigative, and informative functions. Thus, Section 6(g) grants ministerial, not legislative, rulemaking authority.
Notably, this reading of the FTC Act would accord with how the FTC viewed its authority until 1962, a fact that the D.C. Circuit found insignificant, but that later doctrine would weigh heavily. Courts should consider an agency’s “past approach” toward its interpretation of a statute, and an agency’s longstanding view that it lacks the authority to take a certain action is a “rather telling” clue that the agency’s newfound claim to such authority is incorrect. Conversely, even widespread judicial acceptance of an interpretation of an agency’s authority does not necessarily mean the construction of the statute is correct. In AMG, the Court gave little weight to the FTC’s argument that appellate courts “have, until recently, consistently accepted its interpretation.” It also rejected the FTC’s argument that “Congress has in effect twice ratified that interpretation in subsequent amendments to the Act.” Because the amendments did not address the scope of Section 13(b), they did not convince the Court in AMG that Congress had acquiesced in the lower courts’ interpretation.
The court in National Petroleum Refiners also lauded the benefits of rulemaking authority and emphasized that the ability to promulgate rules would allow the FTC to carry out the purpose of the act. But the Supreme Court has emphasized that “however sensible (or not)” an interpretation may be, “a reviewing court’s task is to apply the text of the statute, not to improve upon it.” Whatever benefits UMC-rulemaking authority may confer on the FTC, they cannot justify departure from the text of the FTC Act.
In sum, even Chevronrequires the agency to rely on a “permissible construction” of the statute, and it is doubtful that the current Supreme Court would see a broad assertion of substantive antitrust rulemaking as “permissible” under the vague language of Section 6(g).
Constitutional Vulnerabilities
The shaky foundation supporting the FTC’s claimed authority for UMC rulemaking is belied by both the potential breadth of such rules and the lack of clear guidance in Section 6(g) itself. The presence of either of these factors increases the likelihood that any rule promulgated under Section 6 runs afoul of the constitutional nondelegation doctrine.
The nondelegation doctrine requires Congress to provide “an intelligible principle” to assist the agency to which it has delegated legislative discretion. Although long considered moribund, the doctrine was recently addressed by the U.S. Supreme Court in Gundy v. United States, which underscored the current relevance of limitations on Congress’ ability to transfer unfettered legislative-like powers to federal agencies. Although the statute in that case was ruled permissible by a plurality of justices, most of the Court’s current members have expressed concerns that the Court has long been too quick to reject nondelegation arguments, arguing for stricter controls in this area. In a concurrence, Justice Samuel Alito lamented that the Court has “uniformly rejected nondelegation arguments and has upheld provisions that authorized agencies to adopt important rules pursuant to extraordinarily capacious standards,” while Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas and Chief Justice John Roberts dissented, decrying the “unbounded policy choices” Congress had bestowed, stating that it “is delegation running riot” to “hand off to the nation’s chief prosecutor the power to write his own criminal code.”
The Gundy dissent cited to A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, where the Supreme Court struck down Congress’ delegation of authority based on language very similar to Section 5 of the FTC Act. Schechter Poultry examined whether the authority that Congress granted to the president under the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) violated the nondelegation clause. The offending NIRA provision gave the president authority to approve “codes of fair competition,” which comes uncomfortably close to the FTC Act’s “unfair methods of competition” grant of authority. Notably, Schechter Poultry expressly differentiated NIRA from the FTC Act based on distinctions that do not apply in the rulemaking context. Specifically, the Court stated that, despite the similar delegation of authority, unlike NIRA, actions under the FTC Act are subject to an adjudicative process. The Court observed that the commission serves as “a quasi judicial body” and assesses what constitutes unfair methods of competition “in particular instances, upon evidence, in light of particular competitive conditions.” That essential distinction disappears in the case of rulemaking, where the commission acts in a quasi-legislative role and promulgates rules of broad application.
It appears that the nondelegation doctrine may be poised for a revival and may play a significant role in the Supreme Court’s evaluation of expansive attempts by the Biden administration to exercise legislative-type authority without explicit congressional authorization and guidance. This would create a challenging backdrop for the FTC to attempt aggressive new UMC rulemaking.
Antitrust Rulemaking by FTC Is Likely to Lead to Inefficient Outcomes and Institutional Conflicts
Aside from the doubts raised by these significant statutory and constitutional issues as to the legality of competition rulemaking by the FTC, there are also several policy and institutional factors counseling against legislative-style antitrust rulemaking.
Legislative Rulemaking on Competition Issues Runs Contrary to the Purpose of Antitrust Law
The core of U.S. antitrust law is based on broadly drafted statutes that, at least for violations outside the criminal-conspiracy context, leave determinations of likely anticompetitive effects, procompetitive justifications, and ultimate liability up to factfinders charged with highly detailed, case-specific determinations. Although no factfinder is infallible, this requirement for highly fact-bound analysis helps to ensure that each case’s outcome has a high likelihood of preserving or increasing consumer welfare.
Legislative rulemaking would replace this quintessential fact-based process with one-size-fits-all bright-line rules. Competition rules would function like per se prohibitions, but based on notice-and-comment procedures, rather than the broad and longstanding legal and economic consensus usually required for per se condemnation under the Sherman Act. Past experience with similar regulatory regimes should give reason for pause here: the Interstate Commerce Commission, for example, failed to efficiently regulate the railroad industry before being abolished with bipartisan consensus in 1996, costing consumers, by some estimates, as much as several billion (in today’s) dollars annually in lost competitive benefits. As FTC Commissioner Christine Wilson observes, regulatory rules “frequently stifle innovation, raise prices, and lower output and quality without producing concomitant health, safety, and other benefits for consumers.” By sacrificing the precision of case-by-case adjudication, rulemaking advocates are also losing one of the best tools we have to account for “market dynamics, new sources of competition, and consumer preferences.”
Potential for Institutional Conflict with DOJ
In addition to these substantive concerns, UMC rulemaking by the FTC would also create institutional conflicts between the FTC and DOJ and lead to divergence between the legal standards applicable to the FTC Act, on the one hand, and the Sherman and Clayton acts, on the other. At present, courts have interpreted the FTC Act to be generally coextensive with the prohibitions on unlawful mergers and anticompetitive conduct under the Sherman and Clayton acts, with the limited exception of invitations to collude. But because the FTC alone has the authority to enforce the FTC Act, and rulemaking by the FTC would be limited to interpretations of that act (and could not directly affect or repeal caselaw interpreting the Sherman and Clayton acts), it would create two separate standards of liability. Given that the FTC and DOJ historically have divided enforcement between the agencies based on the industry at issue, this could result in different rules of conduct, depending on the industry involved. Types of conduct that have the potential for anticompetitive effects under certain circumstances but generally pass a rule-of-reason analysis could nonetheless be banned outright if the industry is subject to FTC oversight. Dissonance between the two federal enforcement agencies would be even more difficult for companies not falling firmly within either agency’s purview; those entities would lack certainty as to which guidelines to follow: rule-of-reason precedent or FTC rules.
Conclusion
Following its rebuke at the Supreme Court in the AMG Capital Management case, now is the time for the FTC to focus on its core, case-by-case administrative mission, taking full advantage of its unique adjudicative expertise. Broad unfair methods of competition rulemaking, however, would be an aggressive step in the wrong direction—away from FTC’s core mission and toward a no-man’s-land far afield from the FTC’s governing statutes.
[On Monday, June 27, Concurrenceshosted a conference on the Rulemaking Authority of the Federal Trade Commission.This conference featured the work of contributors to a new book on the subject edited by Professor Dan Crane. Several of these authors have previously contributed to the Truth on the Market FTC UMC Symposium. We are pleased to be able to share with you excerpts or condensed versions of chapters from this book prepared by authors of of those chapters. Our thanks and compliments to Dan and Concurrences for bringing together an outstanding event and set of contributors and for supporting our sharing them with you here.]
[The post below was authored by Alden F. Abbott.]
I. Introduction
In over a century of existence, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has been a policy leader in developing American thinking about and in enforcing antitrust and consumer protection laws pursuant to several specific statutory mandates. It has also promulgated a substantial number of consumer protection rules, dealing with a wide variety of practices. It has almost never, however, enacted substantive rules seeking to regulate specified forms of business conduct that affect competition in the marketplace.
In 2021, however, the prospects for FTC competition rulemaking changed dramatically. A new Biden administration FTC chair, Lina Khan, publicly emphasized that the Commission should undertake “unfair methods of competition” (UMC) rulemakings. In December 2021, the FTC issued a “Statement of Regulatory Priorities” (SRP) stating that “the Commission in the coming year will consider developing both unfair-methods-of competition [UMC] rulemakings as well as rulemakings to define with specificity unfair or deceptive acts or practices [UDAPs].” The SRP also summarized the status of FTC rules and guides that are subject to periodic review.
With regard to UDAP rules, the SRP highlighted for consideration “rules that allow the agency to recover redress for consumers who have been defrauded and seek penalties for firms that engage in data abuses.” The SRP also explained that “the abuses stemming from surveillance-based business models are particularly alarming,” and thus the FTC would consider a possible rulemaking focused on “curbing lax security practices, limiting intrusive surveillance, and ensuring that algorithmic decision-making does not result in unlawful discrimination.”
With respect to UMC rules, the FTC painted with a broad brush, and referenced President Biden’s July 2021 Executive Order on Competition:
Over the coming year, the Commission will also explore whether rules defining certain “unfair methods of competition” prohibited by section 5 of the FTC Act would promote competition and provide greater clarity to the market. A recent Executive Order encouraged the Commission to consider competition rulemakings relating to non-compete clauses, surveillance, the right to repair, pay-for-delay pharmaceutical agreements, unfair competition in online marketplaces, occupational licensing, real-estate listing and brokerage, and industry-specific practices that substantially inhibit competition. The Commission will explore the benefits and costs of these and other competition rulemaking ideas.
Recently, the Commission published in the Federal Register a “Request for Public Comment Regarding Contract Terms that May Harm Fair Competition,” which included for reference two public petitions for competition rulemaking the Commission has received. One of those petitions was to curtail the use of non-compete clauses, and the other was to limit exclusionary contracting by dominant firms, but the Commission also solicited additional examples of unfair terms. Members of the public filed thousands of comments, which the Commission’s staff are carefully reviewing.
In short, significant FTC competition-related rulemaking initiatives are to be expected in 2022. The prospect that those initiatives will yield binding rules that survive legal scrutiny is, however, vanishingly small.
This commentary (which is an abridged chapter in a book on FTC rulemaking published by Concurrences) will explore legal doctrines that seriously constrain the FTC’s ability to enact competition rules. After summarizing the FTC’s authority to engage in rulemaking, it will turn to five major legal impediments to successful competition rulemaking that the FTC must confront. Each of these impediments creates substantial competition rulemaking legal risks for the Commission. Considered collectively, these impediments point to a very low likelihood of competition rulemaking success. Accordingly, the FTC should reconsider its bold competition rulemaking agenda and focus instead on devoting those rulemaking resources to other initiatives within its purview, including competition enforcement actions and policy studies. Such a reset of FTC priorities would likely yield a far better allocation of scarce governmental resources to initiatives that benefit consumers and avoid the imposition of unwarranted costs on private actors and the competitive process.
II. Discussion
1. FTC Rulemaking: An Overview
The Federal Trade Commission is an independent federal agency created pursuant to the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914. The FTC’s mission is to protect consumers and promote competition (see generally here). It does this primarily through enforcement actions, directed at practices that violate section 5 of the FTC’s Act’s prohibitions on “unfair methods of competition” and “unfair or deceptive acts or practices.” While the FTC has also promulgated binding rules and non-binding enforcement guides throughout the course of its history, its principal means for advancing its mission has been enforcement, not regulation. As the FTC explains:
The basic statute enforced by the FTC, Section 5(a) of the FTC Act, empowers the agency to investigate and prevent unfair methods of competition, and unfair or deceptive acts or practices affecting commerce. This creates the Agency’s two primary missions: protecting competition and protecting consumers. The statute gives the FTC authority to seek relief for consumers, including injunctions and restitution, and in some instances to seek civil penalties from wrongdoers. The FTC has the ability to implement trade regulation rules defining with specificity acts or practices that are unfair or deceptive and the Commission can publish reports and make legislative recommendations to Congress about issues affecting the economy. The Commission enforces various antitrust laws under Section 5(a) of the FTC Act as well as the Clayton Act. The FTC monitors all its orders to ensure compliance.
FTC rules may be divided into three categories: section 6(g) rules, section 18 rules, and rules promulgated pursuant to statutes other than the FTC Act.
2. Section 6(g) Rules
Section 6(g) of the original Federal Trade Commission Act (“section 6(g)”) is a very short provision that empowers the FTC to “classify corporations” and also authorizes the Commission “to make rules and regulations for the purpose of carrying out the provisions of this subchapter [embodying the statutory authorities bestowed on the FTC].” Section 6(g) is a very tiny part of section 6 of the FTC Act, which delineates FTC powers to conduct investigations, issue reports, make criminal referrals to the Justice Department, cooperate with foreign enforcers, and expend funds for meetings with foreign officials and law enforcement groups. Section 6(g) primarily has been used by the Commission to enact procedural rules governing investigations and internal processes, not substantive rules dealing with business conduct.
Section 6(g) substantive rules today are subject to the informal rulemaking requirements of section 553 of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which apply to the vast majority of federal agency rulemaking proceedings. Informal rulemaking involves publication of a proposed rule, followed by public comment (at least 30 days), followed by publication of a final rule.
In 1971, the FTC enacted a section 6(g) rule stating that it was both an “unfair method of competition” and an “unfair act or practice” for refiners or others who sell to gasoline retailers “to fail to disclose clearly and conspicuously in a permanent manner on the pumps the minimum octane number or numbers of the motor gasoline being dispensed.” In 1973, in the National Petroleum Refiners case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the FTC’s authority to promulgate this and other binding substantive rules. The court rejected the argument that section 6(g) authorized only nonsubstantive regulations regarding the FTC’s nonadjudicatory, investigative, and informative functions, spelled out elsewhere in section 6. Notably, however, the FTC has not enacted any 6(g) competition rules in the nearly fifty years since the National Petroleum Refiners case was decided.
3. Section 18 Rules
In 1975, Congress granted the FTC specific consumer protection rulemaking authority (authorizing enactment of trade regulation rules dealing with unfair or deceptive acts or practices) through section 202 of the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, which added section 18 to the Federal Trade Commission Act (“section 18”). Section 18 imposes hearing-type requirements that are not found in APA informal rulemakings. As the FTC explains, once the Commission has promulgated a trade regulation rule, anyone who violates the rule “with actual knowledge or knowledge fairly implied on the basis of objective circumstances that such act is unfair or deceptive and is prohibited by such rule” is liable for civil penalties for each violation.
Section 18 consumer protection rulemakings impose adjudicatory-type hearings and other specific requirements on the FTC, unlike more flexible section 6(g) APA informal rulemakings. However, as noted above, the FTC can obtain civil penalties for knowing violation of Magnuson-Moss rules, something it cannot do if 6(g) rules are violated. Since 1975, the FTC has promulgated only seven Magnuson-Moss rules, reflecting the “slow and cumbersome” nature of those rulemakings, according to some scholarly critics. The FTC has nevertheless issued a wide variety of substantive consumer protection rules in recent decades under various special statutes directed at specific consumer protection problems identified by Congress.
4. Non-FTC Act Rules
Over the years, Congress has passed a variety of statutes empowering the FTC to address particularized problems, through FTC enforcement and rulemaking initiatives, as appropriate. There are 82 such statutes currently in force, and only 16 deal solely with competition matters. FTC rules adopted pursuant to the many specialized consumer protection statutes (most of which were adopted in recent decades) largely obviated the need for and displaced section 6(g) consumer protection rulemaking initiatives of the 1960s.
The specialized competition laws (“special competition statutes”) involve such targeted substantive and procedural topics as, for example, fisheries conservation and management, litigation settlements between patented and generic drug makers, research and production joint ventures, outer continental shelf oil and gas leases, export trade associations, and international antitrust cooperation. Any FTC rules enacted under those laws inevitably are closely tied to and limited by the specific grant of congressional authority. Only one of the competition-related statutory grants, the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act of 1976 (HSR), involves rulemaking that is highly significant to antitrust enforcement across the board. Those rules, which were first promulgated in the 1970s and have been tweaked over time, directly carry out the statutory mandate and yield finely honed guidance to the private sector (similar to the detailed guidance that non-antitrust primarily regulatory agencies typically provide). In marked contrast to HSR, the section 6(g) reference to rulemaking is an extremely short and general provision that provides no framework to guide the development of possible substantive competition rules.
5. Legal Impediments to FTC Competition Rulemaking
In order to promulgate new FTC competition rules falling outside the ambit of specialized statutes, the FTC would have to rely primarily on section 6(g). Such rulemaking endeavors would face at least five legal doctrinal obstacles.
First, the “nondelegation doctrine” suggests that, under section 6(g), Congress did not confer on the FTC the specific statutory authority required to issue rules that address particular competitive practices.
Second, principles of statutory construction strongly indicate that the FTC’s general statutory provision dealing with rulemaking refers to procedural rules of organization, not substantive rules bearing on competition.
Third, even assuming that proposed competition rules survived these initial hurdles, principles of administrative law would raise the risk that competition rules would be struck down as “arbitrary and capricious.”
Fourth, there is a substantial possibility that courts would not defer to the FTC’s construction through rulemaking of its “unfair methods of competition” as authorizing the condemnation of specific competitive practices.
Fifth, any attempt by the FTC to rely on its more specific section 18 rulemaking powers to reach anticompetitive practices would be cabined by the limited statutory scope of those powers.
Considering these obstacles collectively, it is exceptionally unlikely that FTC competition rules will survive legal challenge.
A. Non-Delegation Doctrine
Although the non-delegation doctrine has been largely moribund over the last century, it may nevertheless be revived in an appropriate case, as five current Supreme Court Justices have spoken favorably of it in recent years. Moreover, although it seldom has been applied directly to strike down regulatory schemes, it has sometimes led the Supreme Court to narrowly construe the scope of a statutory delegation to strike down sweeping agency actions without invoking the doctrine. What’s more, the Supreme Court has held that a statutory delegation must be supported by an “intelligible principle” guiding its application. As such, The Court could well decide it appropriate to strike down far-reaching FTC rules that are based on broad and novel constructions of the vague yet expansive term “unfair methods of competition.”
B. Principles of Statutory Construction
The structure of the Federal Trade Commission Act indicates that the rulemaking referenced in section 6(g) is best understood as an aid to FTC processes and investigations, not a source of substantive policymaking. Although the National Petroleum Refiners decision rejected such a reading, that ruling came at a time of significant judicial deference to federal agency activism and appears dated. Furthermore, the Supreme Court’s April 2021 decision in AMG Capital Management v. FTCembodies a reluctance to read general non-specific language as conferring broad substantive powers on the FTC. This interpretive approach is in line with other Supreme Court case law that rejects finding “elephants in mouseholes.”
The FTC would have to provide a sufficient basis to justify a determination that a particular practice barred by rule is inevitably anticompetitive. Doing so might prove difficult, because it would be in tension with the traditional “rule of reason” analysis of antitrust litigation, which evaluates particular practices on a fact-specific, case-by-case basis. If a reviewing court were to find that the FTC rulemaking record did not sufficiently take into account potential procompetitive manifestations of a condemned practice, for example, it might decide that the rule is arbitrary and strike it down. This risk would appear to be substantial, particularly given the lack of a preexisting competition rulemaking tradition that could help guide rulemaking review by the courts. Relatedly, a novel FTC construction of “unfair methods of competition” through rulemaking that was at odds with antitrust case law could raise due process of law objections.
D. Court Deference to FTC Interpretations of “Unfair Methods of Competition” Is Unlikely
The courts would be unlikely to accord “Chevron deference” to FTC Section 6(g) rules that construed the term “unfair methods of competition” to apply to specific competitive practices. The Supreme Court has avoided applying agency regulatory interpretations to various “major questions” of great “economic and political significance” (such as, for example, disputes involving the Affordable Care Act and the application of food and drug law to tobacco products)—either by determining from the start not to apply Chevron or by finding Chevron applies but electing nevertheless to reject agency statutory constructions. Given this background, the Supreme Court could readily determine that whether a broad array of hitherto unregulated commercial practices should be newly regulated on grounds of “unfairness” poses a “major question” for Congress that is beyond the scope of the FTC’s authority, rendering Chevron inapplicable. In addition, because “unfair methods of competition” rules could implicate the substantive content of antitrust law, such rules could interfere with Justice Department antitrust prosecutorial principles. This would solidify the conclusion that FTC competition rules implicate “major questions” of antitrust policy and interagency jurisdiction that should be left to Congress, and are outside the purview of the FTC’s interpretive authority.
E. Section 18 Rulemakings and Anticompetitive Practices
Given the substantial legal risks that confront section 6(g) rulemaking, the FTC might turn to section 18 (“unfair or deceptive acts or practices”) as a possible vehicle for the promulgation of new competition rules. The scope of possible application of section 18 to competition questions is, however, quite limited at best (see here). A “deceptive act or practice,” which the FTC defines as a “misrepresentation, omission, or other practice” that misleads consumers, is naturally directed to concerns about harm directly imposed on consumers by a business practice. It does not, however, fit naturally into concerns about business behavior that harms the process of competition. As such, a “deception” theory would not appear to be a good vehicle for a competition rule. Section 5(n) of the FTC Act, required that an “unfair act or practice” must impose measurable harm on consumers who acted reasonably. Second, such harm must be greater than any countervailing benefits to competition or consumers—in short, the conduct must on net be harmful, that is, it must fail a cost-benefit test. The FTC would have a very hard time jumping through the Section 18 evidentiary hoops to show that particular business practices met this test. In addition, courts might well conclude that Congress Section 18 was not designed by Congress to apply to “unfair method of competition.” Finally, two of the five current FTC Commissioners have criticized recent FTC revisions of the Commission’s rules of practice (see here) as undermining the goals of participation and transparency that Congress sought to advance when it enacted and amended Section 18. This could make judges even more reluctant to hold that Section 18 authorized novel competition rulemaking powers.
III. Conclusion
The current FTC leadership may be expected (at least initially) to proceed with competition rulemaking efforts, given Chair Khan’s strong support for this initiative. Rulemaking, of course, requires the gathering of evidence and the taking of testimony. Moreover, new competition rules imposing limitations on specified business practices or industry sectors would likely be appealed to U.S. courts of appeal. Eventually, one would expect the Supreme Court to step in to review the legal status of a particular competition rule and, most likely, the legality of FTC competition rulemaking itself. All of this would entail a substantial commitment of scarce public and private resources and take a considerable amount of time—the current FTC leadership likely would be long gone before a final legal resolution by the Supreme Court. Yet the end result would be in all likelihood a ruling that the FTC lacked substantive competition rulemaking authority. In short, the FTC rulemaking saga would almost surely entail pure waste, to the detriment of consumer welfare, producer welfare, and sound government.
Welcome to the FTC UMC Roundup for June 10, 2022. This is a week of headlines! One would be forgiven for assuming that our focus, once again, would on the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA). I heard on the radio yesterday that it’s champion, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), has the 60 votes it needs to pass, and we are told the vote will be “quite soon.”Yet that is not our headline this week. So it goes in a busy week of news.
This week’s headline is FTC Chair Lina Khan’s press tour–a clear sign of big things on the horizon. This past week she spoke with the AP, Axios, CNN, The Hill, Politico, Protocol, New York Times, Vox, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post, and probably more. Almost a year to the day into her term as Chair, it seems she may have something to say? Yes: “There are [sic] a whole set of major policy initiatives that we have underway that we’re expecting will come to fruition over this next year.”
The Chair’s press tour consistently struck several chords. She emphasized three priorities: merger guidelines and enforcement, regulating non-compete compete agreements, and privacy and security. In several interviews she discussed the use of both enforcement and rulemaking. It seems clear that a proposal for rules targeting non-compete agreements using the FTC’s unfair methods of competition (UMC) authority is imminent. It also seems likely that these rules will be modest. In several of the interviews Khan emphasized proceeding cautiously with respect to process. This speaks to one of the questions everyone has been asking: will Khan approach UMC rulemaking slowly, using modest initial rules to lay the groundwork to support more ambitious future rules but risking the clock on her term as Chair running out before much can be accomplished–or will she instead take a more aggressive approach, for instance by pushing ahead with a slate of proposed rules right out of the gate. We seem to have at least an initial answer: she hopes slow and steady will in the race.
Slow and steady doesn’t mean not aggressive. Khan’s interviews clearly suggest more aggressive merger enforcement moving forward–including potential challenges to mergers that have cleared the HSR review period. While not new news, Khan also made clear her preference to block transactions outright instead of allowing firms to cure potentially problematic parts of proposed deals. And she also discussed potential rulemaking relating to mergers. Perhaps most noteworthy was her discussion of “user privacy and commercial surveillance” in several interviews–including some in which it was unclear whether these concerns sounded in consumer protection or competition. The inclusion of “commercial surveillance” suggests a broader focus than traditional privacy concerns–perhaps including business models or competition in the advertising space.
Another theme was Khan’s blurred distinction between merely enforcing existing law and transforming the FTC. Her view is probably best described as neither and both: technology has transformed the economy and the FTC’s existing law is flexible enough to adapt to those changes. That, surely, will frame the central questions–likely to ultimately be answered by the courts–as the FTC charts a course across this sea of change: whether Congress empowered the FTC to regulate wherever the market took it and, if so, whether such power is too broad for Congress to have given to an agency.
That brings us to Congress. AICOA’s uncertain future remains uncertain. We can say with certainty that the bill has entered the proxy war phase. Supporters of the bill, having already played the “exclude favored industries from the bill” hand, are now targeting leadership directly. And industry still covered by the bill–if you can call a small number of individual firms an industry–is pulling out the lobbying stops, including getting the message out directly to consumers.
If AICOA is to pass, it will do so upon a fragile coalition–at least 10 Republicans will need to cross party lines to support the legislation. Several Republicans seem poised to support the bill today, but will that be true tomorrow? Conservative voices including the Wall Street Journal are urging them not to. Not-so-conservative voices like Mike Masnick also raise concerns about the strange bedfellows needed to make the AICOA dream real. Both sides make the same point: Republican support for the bill comes from a belief that the bill addresses Republican concerns about censorship by BigTech. The Wall Street Journal argues that states are already addressing censorship concerns through narrower legislation that doesn’t risk the harm to innovation that AICOA could bring; Masnick warns Democrats that the Republican belief that AICOA could worsen the content moderation landscape is non-frivolous.
With Republican support for the bill built on so soft a foundation–clearly not based on antitrust concerns–it is quite possible for it to shift quickly. Indeed, one wonders whether this fragile bipartisan coalition will survive the January 6th Committee hearings started this week.
Some quick hits before we leave. This was a busy week for the FTC in healthcare. Continuing its focus on PBMs in recent weeks, the FTC has now opened a probe of PBMs. And the Commission has sued to block multiple hospital mergers in New Jersey and Utah. There were several reminders that Elon Musk’s proposed acquisition of Twitter has passed the HSR’s review period without challenge–perhaps someone should remind reporters on the Elon beat that that won’t prevent the FTC from challenging the merger? And in case anyone is wondering whether a settlement is on the table for Facebook, Khan has made clear that the FTC will gladly settle with Facebook–Facebook just needs to accept all the FTC’s terms.
A closing note: If you’re reading this on a lazy Friday afternoon in June and could use a good listen during lunch or on the commute home, you could do worse than listening to Richard Pierce, professor and Administrative Law guru, discuss whether administrative law allows the FTC to use rulemaking to change antitrust law.
The FTC UMC Roundup, part of the Truth on the Market FTC UMC Symposium, is a weekly roundup of news relating to the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust and Unfair Methods of Competition authority. If you would like to receive this and other posts relating to these topics, subscribe to the RSS feed here. If you have news items you would like to suggest for inclusion, please mail them to us at ghurwitz@laweconcenter.org and/or kfierro@laweconcenter.org.
Welcome to the FTC UMC Roundup for June 3, 2023–Memorial Day week. The holiday meant we had a short week, but we still have plenty of news to share. It also means we’re now in meteorological summer, a reminder that the sands of legislative time run quickly through the hourglass. So it’s perhaps unsurprising that things continue to heat up on the legislative front, from antitrust to privacy and even some saber-rattling on remedies. Plus a fair bit of traditional-feeling action coming out of the FTC. Let’s jump in
At the Top
This week’s headline isn’t quite UMC- or even antitrust-related, but it’s headline-worthy nonetheless: after 14 years as COO of Facebook/Meta, Sheryl Sandberg has decided it’s time to lean her way out of the role. There aren’t obvious lines to read between with this departure–but it nonetheless marks a significant change to the organization and comes at a challenging time for the organization.
On the Hill
Turning to Congress, our first topic is Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s (D-MN) continued efforts to wrangle up enough support for the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA). The hold-up appears to be on the Democrat’s side of the aisle. Republican co-sponsor of the bill, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), says of Democratic efforts to rally support that “they don’t think they have the votes.” Also on the topic of AICOA, the International Center for Law and Economics hosted a discussion about the legislation this past week. Lazar Radic offered a recap here, complete with a link to the recording.
Reuters reports that Big Tech is ramping up efforts against AICOA. A spokesperson for Senator Klobuchar responded to a statement released by Amazon by asking “Who do you trust?” Well, Big Tech over Congress by a 2.5-to-1 margin, with a majority of Americans disfavoring increased regulation of Big Tech. The “who do you trust” question was actually focusing on concerns that some small businesses have shared about Amazon. How would AICOA affect small business?Geoff Manne weighs in, discussing the harm that AICOA could bring to the startup and venture capital markets.
AICOA isn’t the only bill making the rounds this week. A bipartisan privacy billcame out of left field, which is also where it seems likely to stay, with Sen. Brain Schatz (D-Hawaii) sending a letter to the Senate Commerce Committee “begging them to pump the brakes” on the bill. What’s the concern? Well, the bill is a compromise–one side agreed to preempt state privacy legislation in exchange for getting a private right of action. Sen. Schatz, likely along with many others, isn’t willing to lose existing state legislation. The bill is likely DOA in this Congress; probably even more DOA post-2022.
Other legislative news includes another bipartisan bill that would streamline permitting for certain tech industries. Ultimately proposed in the interest of supply-chain resilience and on-shoring critical industries, this seems to set the stage for future “left hand vs. right hand” industrial policy. (D-Georgia) has
At the Agencies
While most of this week’s news has been focused on Congress, the FTC and DOJ have been busy as well. Bloomberg reports on the increased attention the FTC is giving to Amazon, including some details about how resources allocated to the investigation have changed and that John Newman is leading the charge within the agency. And there are rumblings that the FTC could still challenge the Amazon-MGM deal, even post-closing.
DOJ and the FTC have announced a June 14/15 workshop “to explore new approaches to enforcing the antitrust laws in the pharmaceutical industry.” Despite the curious phrasing (there aren’t that many ways to enforce a law!) this event could provide insight into the FTC’s thinking about potential UMC rulemaking.
Binyamin Applebaum has an interesting NY Times opinion piece arguing that President Biden needs to appoint more judges with antitrust expertise to the bench. The lack of antitrust and regulatory expertise among Biden’s appointees to date is notable. Of course, Applebaum likely has a different sort of “antitrust expertise” in mind than most antitrust experts do. As Brian Albrecht writes in his own National Review op-ed, “Antitrust is Easy (When you Think You Know All the Answers).”
The “we need more judges” argument juxtaposes with AAG Kanter’s recent comments that he wants to bring cases, lots and lots of cases. “If we don’t go to court, then we’re regulators, not enforcers,” he recently commented at a University of Chicago conference. That is his approach to “the need to update and adapt our antitrust enforcement to address new market realities.” It remains to be seen how the courts will respond. Regardless, it is refreshing to see a preference for the antitrust laws to be enforced through the Article III courts.
Closing Notes
If you’re looking for some distraction on your commute home, we have two recommendations this week. The top choice is the Tech Policy Podcastdiscussion with FTC Commissioner Noah Phillips. And when you’re done with that, Mark Jamison will point you to an AEI discussion with Howard Beales, former FTC Chair Tim Muris, and former FTC Commissioner and Acting Chair Maureen K. Ohlhausen.
The FTC UMC Roundup, part of the Truth on the Market FTC UMC Symposium, is a weekly roundup of news relating to the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust and Unfair Methods of Competition authority. If you would like to receive this and other posts relating to these topics, subscribe to the RSS feed here. If you have news items you would like to suggest for inclusion, please mail them to us at ghurwitz@laweconcenter.org and/or kfierro@laweconcenter.org.
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