Amazon Dismisses New Evidence in California Antitrust Suit

An Amazon spokesperson said Monday (April 20) that the company looks forward to responding in court to a motion filed by California Attorney General Rob Bonta as part of an antitrust lawsuit launched in 2022.

“The Attorney General’s motion is a transparent attempt to distract from the weakness of its case, coming more than three years after filing its complaint and based on supposedly ‘new’ evidence it has had for years,” an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement emailed to PYMNTS.

Bonta said Monday a press release issued by the California Department of Justice that evidence released publicly and largely unredacted Monday details how Amazon pressures vendors and competitors to increase prices so that they are not lower than its own.

Bonta said the evidence is in a filing that he filed in a request for a preliminary injunction, which asks a court to halt what he called Amazon’s illegal conduct while the lawsuit is underway. On Monday, he secured public access to the filing, according to the release.

“The company is price fixing, colluding with vendors and other retailers to raise costs for Americans beyond what the market requires — beyond what is fair,” Bonta said in the release. “Amid a crisis of affordability, Amazon is illegally working to rake in profits by making sure consumers have nowhere else to turn to for lower prices.”

According to the California Department of Justice press release, Amazon caused price increases for consumers via three illegal schemes, including colluding with competitors through their common vendor to match each other’s increased price, asking a competitor through a vendor to raise their retail price so that Amazon can do the same, and having a vendor remove a product from a competing retailer that is offering a lower price.

The department said in the release that these practices span years and product lines.

In the Monday statement, the Amazon spokesperson said: “Amazon is consistently identified as America’s lowest-priced online retailer, and we’re proud of the low prices customers find when shopping in our store. Amazon looks forward to responding in court at the appropriate time.”

The Guardian reported Thursday (April 16) that Bonta said that documents that had not yet been made publicly available showed that Amazon pressures sellers using its platform to raise their prices on competitors’ websites if those prices are even a penny lower than Amazon’s.

Bonta filed the antitrust lawsuit in September 2022. On Thursday, it was reported that a California court ruled that key factual disputes must be resolved before the case can proceed, which denied Amazon an early victory in the antitrust case.

According to the Monday press release, a hearing on California’s preliminary injunction motion is scheduled for July and the case is set to go to trial in January 2027.