Business
Visa, Google, JetBlue: A Guide to a New Era of Antitrust Action
The Justice Department accuses Visa of unfairly stifling competition in debit cards, claiming the company has maintained a monopoly by imposing or threatening to impose higher fees on merchants that also use other payment networks.
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President Biden’s top antitrust enforcers have promised to sue monopolies and block big mergers — a cornerstone of the administration’s economic agenda to restore competition to the economy.
Below are 15 major cases brought by the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission since late 2020 (including cases against Google and Meta initially filed during the Trump administration just before Mr. Biden took office).
The government has won several but not all the cases. And with only a few months remaining for the current administration, the number of suits is climbing, as regulators go after dominant companies in tech, pharmaceuticals, finance and even groceries.
In a lawsuit, the D.O.J. said that more than 60 percent of debit transactions in the United States run on Visa’s network, allowing it to charge over $7 billion in fees each year for processing those transactions. Government lawyers argued that Visa penalizes its customers when they try to use competing services and that it has built a monopoly around payment processing.
The Justice Department accuses Visa of unfairly stifling competition in debit cards, claiming the company has maintained a monopoly by imposing or threatening to impose higher fees on merchants that also use other payment networks.
Read more › The F.T.C. accused three big prescription drug middlemen, known as pharmacy benefits managers, of artificially raising prices for insulin drugs and making it harder for individuals to obtain cheaper options. The legal action targeted CVS Health’s Caremark, Cigna’s Express Scripts and UnitedHealth’s Optum Rx and subsidiaries they’ve created to handle drug negotiations. The three companies collectively control 80 percent of prescriptions in the United States.
The F.T.C. files an administrative complaint, which is not yet public, that seeks to prohibit pharmacy benefit managers from steering patients to drugs that make them more money.
Read more › The F.T.C. sued to block Kroger’s $24.6 billion acquisiton of Albertsons, which, if allowed to proceed, would be the biggest supermarket merger in U.S. history. The companies said the merger would bolster their leverage with suppliers; the government contended that it would drive up prices for shoppers and suppress worker wages.
The hearing, a mini-trial, lasts just over three weeks. The judge in the case has yet to issue a decision.
The trial begins in Oregon, where both grocery companies have a significant presence. The case enters the spotlight as high food prices become a critical focus in the presidential race.
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The F.T.C. and eight states, plus the District of Columbia, sue to block Kroger from acquiring rival supermarket chain Albertsons. They say the deal would most likely result in higher prices for groceries and weakened bargaining power for unionized workers.
Read more › The D.O.J. alleged Google harmed competition over the technology used to place advertising on web sites. The department and eight states said Google acquired rivals through anticompetitive mergers and bullied publishers and advertisers into using the company’s ad technology.
The trial is expected to take about a month. The government has asked for a breakup of the company, requiring Google to sell off some assets.
Read more › The Justice Department and a group of eight states accuse Google of abusing a monopoly over the technology that powers online advertising.
Read more › The D.O.J. and a group of states sued Google, saying its role in about 90 percent of all internet searches made it a monopoly. The lawsuit, which was filed in the final days of the Trump administration, alleged Google uses exclusive contracts with phone makers like Apple and other companies to feature Google search on their devices, making it harder for consumers to use rival search engines like Bing or DuckDuckGo.
In a 277-page ruling, a federal judge calls Google a monopolist and says it has acted illegally to maintain that monopoly. A trial to determine remedies is set to begin in 2025.
Read more › The chief executive of Google’s parent company, Sundar Pichai, counters the government’s narrative in testimony that describes Google’s deals with other tech companies as having been in the best interest of consumers.
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As a trial begins, Satya Nadella, the chief executive of Microsoft, becomes the government’s highest-profile witness in the case when he testifies that even his company has found it difficult to compete with Google’s search products.
Read more › The Justice Department accuses Google of maintaining its monopoly over search and search advertising, crowding out competition through exclusive business contracts.
Read more › An F.T.C. lawsuit sought to block Tapestry’s $8.5 billion acquisition of Capri, a blockbuster fashion tie-up to bring together Coach, Kate Spade, Michael Kors and Versace. The suit was a rare move by the agency to block a fashion deal, given that the industry does not suffer from a lack of competition.
A hearing, which effectively serves as a mini-trial, begins over whether the government should put a halt to the deal while the F.T.C. can mount a case against the merger.
The F.T.C. sues to block a merger of two fashion companies, Tapestry and Capri Holdings, that would bring together brands like Coach, Michael Kors and Kate Spade. The agency says the deal could force millions of consumers to pay more for “accessible luxury” accessories — less expensive goods sold by high-end firms — because the combined company would no longer have the incentive to compete on price.
Read more › An antitrust lawsuit filed by the D.O.J. and several states against RealPage, a real estate software company, said its technology enabled landlords to collude to raise rents across the country. It was the first major civil antitrust lawsuit to centrally feature the role of an algorithm in pricing manipulation, D.O.J. officials said.
In its complaint, the Justice Department accuses RealPage of enabling a price-fixing conspiracy that artificially raised rents for millions of people.
Read more › The D.O.J. accused Apple of using a monopoly in the smartphone market to stifle competition and inflate prices for consumers. In its suit, the department said Apple blocked companies from offering apps that competed with Apple versions, including Messages and Wallet.
Apple files a motion to dismiss the case, saying its business decisions didn’t violate antitrust laws. It has argued that those decisions make the iPhone a better experience.
The Justice Department and 16 states, plus the District of Columbia, file a challenge to the reach and influence of Apple, arguing that the company has used anticompetitive tactics to keep customers reliant on their iPhones.
Read more › Live Nation Entertainment, the concert giant that owns Ticketmaster, stands accused of illegally maintaining a monopoly in the live entertainment industry. The D.O.J. said Ticketmaster provided exclusive ticketing contracts with concert venues, which helped Live Nation shore up its dominance, depriving consumers of better prices and options.
The Justice Department, joined by 29 states and the District of Columbia, accuses Live Nation of leveraging its sprawling empire to dominate the live music industry by locking venues into exclusive ticketing contracts, pressuring artists to use its services and threatening its rivals with financial retribution.
Read more › A merger between JetBlue and Spirit, which would have created the fifth-largest airline in the United States, was blocked by a federal judge after a D.O.J. challenge. Government lawyers argued that smaller, low-cost airlines like Spirit helped reduce fares and that allowing the company to be acquired by JetBlue, which tends to charge higher prices than Spirit, would have hurt consumers.
JetBlue and Spirit announce that they will not seek to overturn a court ruling that blocked their planned $3.8 billion merger.
Read more › In a 109-page ruling siding with the government, the judge in the case says the merger would “likely incentivize JetBlue further to abandon its roots as a maverick, low-cost carrier.”
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The Justice Department files a lawsuit seeking to stop JetBlue Airways from buying Spirit Airlines, arguing that the $3.8 billion deal would reduce competition.
Read more › A lawsuit filed by the F.T.C. and 17 states against Amazon accused the retail behemoth of squeezing merchants and favoring its own competing brands and services over third-party sellers. A trial date is set for 2026.
Amazon asks the court to dismiss the suit, arguing that the F.T.C. failed to identify the harm consumers were experiencing. It says the agency confused “common retail practices” with monopolistic behavior.
The F.T.C. and 17 states sue Amazon, contending its online store and merchant services illegally stifle competition. The lawsuit that raises the possibility of altering the company’s structure.
Read more › The F.T.C. sued to block Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, which, if allowed to proceed, would be the largest consumer tech acquisition since AOL bought Time Warner more than two decades ago. The case follows scrutiny of the deal by regulators in Europe. Microsoft makes the consoles and platforms on which Activision’s games are played, and the merger of two companies that don’t directly compete is known as a vertical merger. Cases against vertical mergers have traditionally been difficult to win.
Microsoft says it has closed its deal with Activision Blizzard, signaling that the tech industry’s giants are still free to use their cash hoards to get even bigger.
Read more › In a 53-page decision, a judge says the F.T.C. has failed to show the merger would result in a substantial reduction in competition that would harm consumers.
Read more › The F.T.C. seeks a preliminary injunction to bar Microsoft from completing the deal before the F.T.C. has the chance to argue the case in its internal court. Microsoft argues a delay would essentially be killing the deal anyway.
Read more › In its suit, the F.T.C. says Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard would harm consumers because Microsoft could use Activision’s blockbuster games like Call of Duty to lure gamers from rivals.
Read more › The Justice Department sought to block a proposed merger between the largest publisher in the United States and a key rival.
In an order, a judge says that the government has demonstrated that the merger might “substantially” harm competition in the market for U.S. publishing rights to anticipated top-selling books.
Read more › The D.O.J. sued to block UnitedHealth Group’s $13 billion acquisition of health technology company Change Healthcare, arguing that a deal would give UnitedHealth sensitive data that it could wield against its competitors in the insurance business.
After a trial over the summer, a judge says in a 58-page memo that UnitedHealth’s incentives to protect customer data as it grows its businesses outweigh motivations to misuse the information.
In a lawsuit, the Justice Department argues UnitedHealth Group’s deal to acquire Change Healthcare, a health technology company, would give the giant insurer access to sensitive data that it could wield against its competitors.
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Nike is cutting about 1,400 jobs in its operations division, mostly from its technology department, the company said Thursday.
In a note to employees, Venkatesh Alagirisamy, the chief operating officer of Nike, said that management was nearly done reorganizing the business for its turnaround plan, and that the goal was to operate with “more speed, simplicity and precision.”
“This is not a new direction,” Mr. Alagirisamy told employees. “It is the next phase of the work already underway.”
Nike, the world’s largest sportswear company, is trying to recover after missteps led to a prolonged sales slump, in which the brand leaned into lifestyle products and away from performance shoes and apparel. Elliott Hill, the chief executive, has worked to realign the company around sports and speed up product development to create more breakthrough innovations.
In March, Nike told investors that it expected sales to fall this year, with growth in North America offset by poor performance in Asia, where the brand is struggling to rejuvenate sales in China. Executives said at the time that more volatility brought on by the war in the Middle East and rising oil prices might continue to affect its business.
The reorganization has involved cuts across many parts of the organization, including at its headquarters in Beaverton, Ore. Nike slashed some corporate staff last year and eliminated nearly 800 jobs at distribution centers in January.
“You never want to have to go through any sort of layoffs, but to re-center the company, we’re doing some of that,” Mr. Hill said in an interview earlier this year.
Mr. Alagirisamy told employees that Nike was reshaping its technology team and centering employees at its headquarters and a tech center in Bengaluru, India. The layoffs will affect workers across North America, Europe and Asia.
The cuts will also affect staffing in Nike’s factories for Air, the company’s proprietary cushioning system. Employees who work on the supply chain for raw materials will also experience changes as staff is integrated into footwear and apparel teams.
Nike’s Converse brand, which has struggled for years to revive sales, will move some of its engineering resources closer to the factories they support, the company said.
Mr. Alagirisamy said the moves were necessary to optimize Nike’s supply chain, deploy technology faster and bolster relationships with suppliers.
A bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to homeowners who take steps to reduce wildfire risk on their property died in the Legislature.
The Senate Insurance Committee on Monday voted down the measure, SB 1076, one of the most ambitious bills spurred by the devastating January 2025 wildfires.
The vote came despite fire victims and others rallying at the state Capitol in support of the measure, authored by state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena), whose district includes the Eaton fire zone.
The Insurance Coverage for Fire-Safe Homes Act originally would have required insurers to offer and renew coverage for any home that meets wildfire-safety standards adopted by the insurance commissioner starting Jan. 1, 2028.
It also threatened insurers with a five-year ban from the sale of home or auto insurance if they did not comply, though it allowed for exceptions.
However, faced with strong opposition from the insurance industry, Pérez had agreed to amend the bill so it would have established community-wide pilot projects across the state to better understand the most effective way to limit property and insurance losses from wildfires.
Insurers would have had to offer four years of coverage to homeowners in successful pilot projects.
Denni Ritter, a vice president of the American Property Casualty Insurance Assn., told the committee that her trade group opposed the bill.
“While we appreciate the intent behind those conversations, those concepts do not remove our opposition, because they retain the same core flaw — substituting underwriting judgment and solvency safeguards with a statutory mandate to accept risk,” she said.
In voting against the bill Sen. Laura Richardson, (D-San Pedro), said: “Last I heard, in the United States, we don’t require any company to do anything. That’s the difference between capitalism and communism, frankly.”
The remarks against the measure prompted committee Chair Sen. Steve Padilla, (D-Chula Vista), to chastise committee members in opposition.
“I’m a little perturbed, and I’m a little disappointed, because you have someone who is trying to work with industry, who is trying to get facts and data,” he said.
Monday’s vote was the fourth time a bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to so-called “fire hardened” homes failed in the Legislature since 2020, according to an analysis by insurance committee staff.
Fire hardening includes measures such as cutting back brush, installing fire resistant roofs and closing eaves to resist fire embers.
Pérez’s legislation was thought to have a better chance of passage because it followed the most catastrophic wildfires in U.S. history, which damaged or destroyed more than 18,000 structures and killed 31 people.
The bill was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles advocacy group Consumer Watchdog and Every Fire Survivor’s Network, a community group founded in Altadena after the fires formerly called the Eaton Fire Survivors Network.
But it also had broad support from groups such as the California Apartment Association, the California Nurses Association and California Environmental Voters.
Leading up to the fires, many insurers, citing heightened fire risk, had dropped policyholders in fire-prone neighorhoods. That forced them onto the California FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, which offers limited but costly policies.
A Times analysis found that that in the Palisades and Eaton fire zones, the FAIR Plan’s rolls from 2020 to 2024 nearly doubled from 14,272 to 28,440. Mandating coverage has been seen as a way of reducing FAIR Plan enrollment.
“I’m disappointed this bill died in committee. Fire survivors deserved better,” Pérez said in a statement .
Also failing Monday in the committee was SB 982, a bill authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, (D-San Francisco). It would have authorized California’s attorney general to sue fossil fuel companies to recover losses from climate-induced disasters. It was opposed by the oil and gas industry.
Passing the committee were two other Pérez bills. SB 877 requires insurers to provide more transparency in the claims process. SB 878 imposes a penalty on insurers who don’t make claims payments on time.
Another bill, SB 1301, authored by insurance commissioner candidate Sen. Ben Allen, (D-Pacific Palisades), also passed. It protects policyholders from unexplained and abrupt policy non-renewals.
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Politicians in Washington and the reporters who cover them have an often adversarial relationship.
But on the last Saturday in April, they gather for an irreverent celebration of press freedom and the First Amendment at the Washington Hilton Hotel: The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
Hosted by the association, an organization that helps ensure access for media outlets covering the presidency, the dinner attracts Hollywood stars; politicians from both parties; and representatives of more than 100 networks, newspapers, magazines and wire services.
While The Times will have two reporters in the ballroom covering the event, the company no longer buys seats at the party, said Richard W. Stevenson, the Washington bureau chief. The decision goes back almost two decades; the last dinner The Times attended as an organization was in 2007.
“We made a judgment back then that the event had become too celebrity-focused and was undercutting our need to demonstrate to readers that we always seek to maintain a proper distance from the people we cover, many of whom attend as guests,” he said.
It’s a decision, he added, that “we have stuck by through both Republican and Democratic administrations, although we support the work of the White House Correspondents’ Association.”
Susan Wessling, The Times’s Standards editor, said the policy is a product of the organization’s desire to maintain editorial independence.
“We don’t want to leave readers with any questions about our independence and credibility by seeming to be overly friendly with people whose words and actions we need to report on,” she said.
The celebrity mentalist Oz Pearlman is headlining the evening, in lieu of the usual comedy set by the likes of Stephen Colbert and Hasan Minhaj, but all eyes will be on President Trump, who will make his first appearance at the dinner as president.
Mr. Trump has boycotted the event since 2011, when he was the butt of punchlines delivered by President Barack Obama and the talk show host Seth Meyers mocking his hair, his reality TV show and his preoccupation with the “birther” movement.
Last month, though, Mr. Trump, who has a contentious relationship with the media, announced his intention to attend this year’s dinner, where he will speak to a room full of the same reporters he often derides as “enemies of the people.”
Times reporters will be there to document the highs, the lows and the reactions in the room. A reporter for the Styles desk has also been assigned to cover the robust roster of after-parties around Washington.
Some off-duty reporters from The Times will also be present at this late-night circuit, though everyone remains cognizant of their roles, said Patrick Healy, The Times’s assistant managing editor for Standards and Trust.
“If they’re reporting, there’s a notebook or recorder out as usual,” he said. “If they’re not, they’re pros who know they’re always identifiable as Times journalists.”
For most of The Times’s reporters and editors, though, the evening will be experienced from home.
“The rest of us will be able to follow the coverage,” Mr. Stevenson said, “without having to don our tuxes or gowns.”
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