California Attorney General Rob Bonta sued Amazon, alleging the company ran a years-long price-fixing scheme that lifted consumer prices across rival retail websites in violation of antitrust law. Bonta argued the examples surfaced in discovery are illustrative of countless interactions spanning years and many different employees and product lines.
The case centers on Amazon’s own internal emails. Bonta alleged those documents show the company trained employees to use vague language in writing or, better yet, to request phone calls when negotiating what Amazon internally called “problematic” pricing on competitor sites, citing the “delicate” nature of such requests. He told The New York Times he’d rarely seen price-fixing “so explicitly and egregiously in writing.”
Amazon spokesperson Brad Blafkin denied the core charge. The company is “consistently identified as America’s lowest-priced online retailer,” he said. To defeat the injunction request, Amazon must show it would suffer “grave or irreparable harm” from a prohibition on the conduct, a burden Bonta says it can’t meet, because financial losses from stopping illegal acts don’t constitute irreparable harm.
Bonta was direct about who drives the scheme. “The price-fixing is not driven by the vendors,” he told the court. “Rather, Amazon tells vendors what prices it wants to see to maintain its own profitability.”
The preliminary injunction hearing is set for July 23. Trial is scheduled for January 2027.
James Okafor