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consumer rights
Over Apple's Objections, Oregon Governor Signs Nation's Strongest Right to Repair Law
"Oregon becomes the first state to ban 'parts pairing,' which let companies like Apple decide when and how you replace parts."
Mar 27, 2024
In a move that advocates said will save Oregon residents money while supporting small businesses and reducing waste of electronic devices, Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek on Wednesday signed the Right to Repair Act, a law that passed earlier this month despite Apple's lobbying efforts.
The Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), applauded the signing of the bill, which requires manufacturers to provide Oregonians and small repair businesses with access to the parts, tools, and information needed to fix personal electronics and household appliances.
Manufacturers like Apple frequently require consumers to go to their stores or authorized service providers for repairs, making them expensive for customers and difficult to access for people who live far from the providers.
Charlie Fisher, state director of Oregon PIRG, said the law means Oregon is "moving forward on an innovation even more critical than a new gadget: the right to fix our electronic devices."
"By eliminating manufacturer restrictions, the right to repair will make it easier for Oregonians to keep their personal electronics running," said Fisher. "That will conserve precious natural resources and prevent waste. It's a refreshing alternative to a 'throwaway' system that treats everything as disposable."
The Right to Repair Act, which will go into effect on January 1, 2025, was supported by roughly 100 small businesses that provide repairs across the state, as well as recycling nonprofit organizations.
Apple testified against the bill, saying it opposed a provision against "parts pairing." The practice requires consumers or independent repair businesses to purchase parts from Apple and have them validated by the company.
John Perry, a senior security manager at Apple, told state senators that the provision would "undermine the security, safety, and privacy of Oregonians by forcing device manufacturers to allow the use of parts of unknown origin and consumer devices."
State Rep. Courtney Neron (D-26) cited a letter from the Federal Trade Commission when she told her colleagues that Apple's parts paring requirements "drive up the price that consumers must pay to fix a device and cause consumers to purchase a new device before the end of its useful life."
"Manufacturer repair restrictions also make it more challenging for small repair businesses to compete and contribute to unnecessary e-waste," she said.
Pro-labor media organization More Perfect Union called Kotek's signing of the bill "a major loss for Apple."
"Oregon has a proud history of passing forward thinking policies that help Oregonians steward and respect the resources that go into making the products we use everyday," said Celeste Meiffren-Swango, state director of Environment Oregon, "and we are building on that legacy with the Right to Repair Act."
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'Really Big': US Supreme Court Ruling Against Norfolk Southern Seen as Rebuke to Corporate Impunity
Big business lawyers are "going to be furious with this decision," said one legal expert.
Jun 27, 2023
Opponents of unmitigated corporate power celebrated Tuesday when the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Norfolk Southern's attempt to limit where companies can be sued.
In a 5-4 opinion written by Justice Neil Gorsuch and joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Sonja Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, the high court ruled that Pennsylvania's "consent-by-registration" law "requiring an out-of-state firm to answer in the commonwealth any suits against it in exchange for status as a registered foreign corporation and the benefits that entails" does not violate the due process clause of the 14th Amendment.
The decision vacates an earlier judgment by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and remands the case.
"This is really big," Slate's Mark Joseph Stern tweeted. Big business lawyers are "going to be furious with this decision."
"This is big—and, in my view, good—because it allows states to exercise personal jurisdiction over corporations that do business within the state but are incorporated elsewhere, often in a jurisdiction that they deem more favorable to their interests," Stern continued.
"Pennsylvania requires out-of-state corporations to file paperwork consenting to appear in Pennsylvania courts as a condition of doing business within the state," Stern added. "Gorsuch says: Nothing about that scheme violates due process."
Matt Stoller, director of research at the American Economic Liberties Project, also applauded the decision.
In 2017, months after being diagnosed with colon cancer, former Norfolk Southern worker Robert Mallory filed a lawsuit alleging that his illness stemmed from workplace exposure to asbestos and other hazardous materials and that the rail carrier failed to provide safety equipment and other resources to ensure he was sufficiently protected on the job.
Although he had never worked in Pennsylvania, Mallory filed his lawsuit in the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas because his attorneys were from the state and "he thought he would get the fairest access to justice there," Ashley Keller, the lawyer representing him before the U.S. Supreme Court, toldThe Lever in February.
As Rebecca Burns and Julia Rock, two of the investigative outlet's reporters, explained at the time:
Norfolk Southern asserts that being forced to defend the case in Pennsylvania would pose an undue burden, thereby violating its constitutional right to due process.
Even though Norfolk Southern owns thousands of miles of track in the Keystone State, the Philadelphia county court sided with the railroad and dismissed the case. Mallory appealed, and the case wound its way through state and federal courts before landing at the U.S. Supreme Court last year.
Norfolk Southern asked the U.S. Supreme Court "to uphold the lower court ruling, overturn Pennsylvania's law, and restrict where corporations can be sued, upending centuries of precedent," the journalists noted.
The American Association of Railroads (AAR), the rail industry's largest lobby, filed a brief last September on behalf of Norfolk Southern. AAR and other powerful corporate lobbying groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the American Trucking Association sought to undermine the ability of workers and consumers to file lawsuits in the venue of their choosing.
President Joe Biden's administration, meanwhile, came under fire earlier this year when The Lever revealed that the U.S. Department of Justice had also filed a brief siding with the railroad giant behind the toxic derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.
If Norfolk Southern had prevailed, it could have been easier for the profitable rail carrier to thwart pending and future lawsuits "on the grounds that they're filed in the wrong venue," The Lever reported, citing Scott Nelson, an attorney with the Public Citizen Litigation Group, which filed a brief backing Mallory. At particular risk would have been "lawsuits filed by residents exposed to hazardous chemicals as the result of accidents in other states," including victims of air or water pollution stemming from the disaster in East Palestine, five miles west of the Pennsylvania state border.
“[Norfolk Southern] might say, 'You can only sue us in Ohio or Virginia [where Norfolk Southern is headquartered],' even if you were injured at your home in Pennsylvania from an accident that took place five miles away in Ohio," Nelson warned.
A ruling in the rail giant's favor could have also established "a national precedent limiting where workers and consumers can bring cases against corporations," Burns and Rock pointed out.
However, workers and consumers are not out of the woods yet. As Bloomberg Lawreported Tuesday, "Alito seemed to invite a future challenge against the [Pennsylvania] law in his concurrence," where he suggested that "Norfolk Southern could win when the case goes back to the lower court."
"In my view, there is a good prospect that Pennsylvania's assertion of jurisdiction here—over an out-of-state company in a suit brought by an out-of-state plaintiff on claims wholly unrelated to Pennsylvania—violates the commerce clause," Alito argued.
Sean Marotta, a partner at Hogan Lovells, which filed a brief on behalf of a law professor in support of Norfolk Southern, "is telling his clients not to panic but to 'stay on guard,'" according to Bloomberg Law. "Under this ruling, he said state legislatures could amend their registration statutes to impose consent-by-registration. They could basically copy and paste the Pennsylvania law because the court is saying it's okay under the Constitution's due process clause, he said."
"There's still a dormant commerce clause fight to have," Marotta told the outlet.
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FTC Sues Amazon for 'Scamming' Millions into Prime Subscription
"Amazon tricked and trapped people into recurring subscriptions without their consent, not only frustrating users but also costing them significant money," said FTC Chair Lina Khan.
Jun 21, 2023
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday sued Amazon for its "yearslong effort to enroll consumers into its Prime program without their consent while knowingly making it difficult for consumers to cancel their subscriptions."
The agency's lawsuit accuses Amazon of violating the FTC Act and the Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act and seeks a permanent injunction, civil penalties, and monetary relief. It was filed with the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, which is located in Seattle, where Amazon is headquartered.
"Amazon has knowingly duped millions of consumers into unknowingly enrolling in Amazon Prime," the FTC said in a statement. "Specifically, Amazon used manipulative, coercive, or deceptive user-interface designs known as 'dark patterns' to trick consumers into enrolling in automatically renewing Prime subscriptions."
"Amazon should not be allowed to continue tricking or scamming people in order to maintain its grip on consumers and control the market."
In addition, the e-commerce giant "knowingly complicated the cancellation process for Prime subscribers who sought to end their membership," the agency continued. "The primary purpose of its Prime cancellation process was not to enable subscribers to cancel, but to stop them. Amazon leadership slowed or rejected changes that would've made it easier for users to cancel Prime because those changes adversely affected Amazon's bottom line."
The number of Prime members worldwide surged from 100 million in 2017 to more than 200 million in 2020, according to annual shareholder letters written by the company's megabillionaire founder and former CEO, Jeff Bezos.
A membership currently costs $139 a year or $14.99 a month in the United States and provides access to Amazon's video streaming service as well as faster shipping on products purchased through the online retailer. According to the FTC's legal complaint, Prime subscription fees alone account for $25 billion of the corporation's annual revenue, and subscribers spend more money on the site, on average, than non-Prime shoppers.
"Amazon tricked and trapped people into recurring subscriptions without their consent, not only frustrating users but also costing them significant money," said FTC Chair Lina Khan. "These manipulative tactics harm consumers and law-abiding businesses alike."
1. @FTC has taken action against @amazon for tricking users into signing up for Prime subscriptions—and then deliberately making it hard to cancel. We charge that these deceptive tactics violate the FTC Act and the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act. https://t.co/ud2j3xmFQ0
— Lina Khan (@linakhanFTC) June 21, 2023
The complaint remains heavily redacted, though the FTC told the court it does not see a compelling reason to maintain secrecy moving forward. In a statement, regulators summarized their allegations of how Amazon intentionally uses so-called "dark patterns" to deceive consumers into joining Prime and to deter them from quitting:
During Amazon's online checkout process, consumers were faced with numerous opportunities to subscribe to Amazon Prime at $14.99/month. In many cases, the option to purchase items on Amazon without subscribing to Prime was more difficult for consumers to locate. In some cases, the button presented to consumers to complete their transaction did not clearly state that in choosing that option they were also agreeing to join Prime for a recurring subscription.
The FTC charges that Amazon put in place a cancellation process designed to deter consumers from successfully unsubscribing from Prime. Previous reporting about the process in the media has noted that Amazon used the term "Iliad" to describe the process, which the reporting cites as an allusion to Homer's epic poem set over 24 books and nearly 16,000 lines about the decadelong Trojan War.
Consumers who attempted to cancel Prime were faced with multiple steps to actually accomplish the task of canceling, according to the complaint. Consumers had to first locate the cancellation flow, which Amazon made difficult. Once they located the cancellation flow, they were redirected to multiple pages that presented several offers to continue the subscription at a discounted price, to simply turn off the auto-renew feature, or to decide not to cancel. Only after clicking through these pages could consumers finally cancel the service.
"Amazon was aware of consumers being nonconsensually enrolled and the complex and confusing process to cancel Prime," the agency added. "The company's executives failed to take any meaningful steps to address the issues until they were aware of the FTC investigation."
On social media, Khan said that "Amazon's counsel stonewalled the FTC's investigation through misdirection and delay. The extent of Amazon's obstruction became clear after an insider leaked documents to Business Insider."
"This lawsuit builds on our ongoing work to protect Americans from firms who trick people into subscriptions and then trap them by making it hard to cancel," said Khan. "Our proposed 'click to cancel' rule would require that firms make it as easy to cancel a subscription as it is to sign up for one."
The FTC is collecting public comments on the proposal through Thursday. Feedback can be submitted here.
Progressives welcomed the agency's lawsuit against Amazon.
"We applaud the FTC for suing Amazon to stop it from trapping people in Amazon Prime and sabotaging consumers' efforts to cancel it," Demand Progress communications director Maria Langholz said in a statement. "We urge the commission to take further steps to rein in the proliferation of abusive tactics utilized by Amazon and other Big Tech companies, particularly 'dark patterns' online that manipulate customers into subscription traps."
"Amazon should not be allowed to continue tricking or scamming people in order to maintain its grip on consumers and control the market," said Langholz. "We call on the FTC, as well as other federal agencies and Congress, to investigate and bring accountability to the full range of abuses of power by Amazon and other Big Tech giants."
In addition to allegedly taking advantage of consumers, Amazon is also notorious for abusing its warehouse workers and delivery drivers.
The FTC's complaint comes one day after U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) launched a probe into what he called Amazon's "dangerous and illegal" working conditions.
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