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In short: FTC wants a court to delay its trial against Amazon for alleged deceptive marketing tactics in its Prime subscription program. The FTC is requesting a delay in the trial because of the layoffs by Elon Musk and Trump’s administration.
In its 2023 complaint, the FTC claimed that Amazon knowingly tricked people into signing up to Prime by using “Dark Patterns,” a reference referring to the number options at the checkout which suggested people sign up for automatic renewals of Prime subscriptions. It also claimed that canceling the membership is a difficult task that involves multiple unnecessary steps. This could lead to some people giving up before the end.
Although a trial was scheduled to begin in September of this year, FTC lawyer Jonathan Cohen asked US District Judge John Chun for a two-month delay. Cohen told Associated Press that he made the statement during a status meeting on Wednesday. “We have lost employees in the agency, in our division and on the case team.”
Cohen confirmed that the FTC’s resources challenges were a result of the recent cuts to federal government employees.
In accordance with President Donald Trump’s directives, all federal employees are going to receive an email asking them to explain what they did last week. Failure to respond is deemed resignation.
Elon Musk (@elonmusk), February 22, 2025.
Since its inception, Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has laid off more than 62,500 federal employees. Cohen said that some FTC employees chose to leave the agency in January following DOGE’s email “Fork in the Road” which offered a program of deferred resignation, allowing employees to announce their resignation as of September 30, 2025. Participants would receive full pay and benefits up to that date.
The government hiring freeze has added to the staffing issues, Cohen said. This has prevented the FTC replacing staff who have resigned due to other reasons.
Cohen stated that the FTC does not want to delay the trial date by more than two months, but could not guarantee the agency would have enough time to resolve its issues. He couldn’t guarantee that the situation won’t worsen by November. Cohen said that the FTC’s legal staff is “racing at considerable cost” working to meet an April deadline for discovery. The FTC is also dealing restrictive rules regarding the purchase of court documents and travel.
Amazon does not want the delay. One of its lawyers said that most of the FTC legal team assigned to this case were still working for the agency and that there was no reason for a delay.
Amazon has denied that it has engaged in deceptive business practices in relation to its Prime subscription services. If the FTC wins, Amazon may refund Prime customers affected by the lawsuit.
