The Federal Trade Commission is seeking an expansion of power and consumer redress authority to solve a problem that they already have a remedy for under §19 of The Federal Trade Commission Act.

For years, the FTC has been using §13(b) of the Federal Trade Commission Act to shut down businesses, freeze business owner assets, and leave those business owners with no money to even defend themselves. This is their playbook. To make matters worse, all of this is enforced immediately with no regard to Constitutional due process rights.

With the recent unanimous Supreme Court decision on April 22, 2021, it is apparent that the FTC has been proceeding illegally to freeze the assets of business owners, leaving those business owners without due process protections and often without adequate counsel. (See: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/19-508_l6gn.pdf)

Forecasting an unfavorable decision from the Supreme Court, the FTC introduced a bill (S. 4626) in the Senate in September 2020, requesting an amendment that would expand the language of §13(b) in order to use it as a substitute for §5 and §19. This is an effort to avoid the administrative procedures and limitations set forth in §19 by Congress.

If such a bill is passed, it will allow the FTC to continue to kill legitimate businesses and rob them of large sums of money before they have an opportunity to defend themselves. (See: Does the FTC Have Blood On Its Hands? An Analysis of FTC Overreach and Abuse of Power After Liu, 68 Buff. L. Rev. 1481 (2020). Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/buffalolawreview/vol68/iss5/4 )

Note: According to the FTC's own stats and data, they only used around 5% of "redress and discourgement" monies to pay back consumers. This should raise concerns about why the FTC wants an easier path to financial remedies. (See: https://www.ftc.gov/reports/annual-highlights-2017/stats-and-data)

Please support the fight to oppose this bill by writing to your congressmen and congresswomen.

This bill should be opposed for the following reasons:

1. Congress has already authorized the FTC to seek monetary awards under §19 of the FTC Act, which affords businesses important procedural and substantive protections designed to ensure fair notice before an imposition of such financial remedies.
2. Without due process protections, the FTC can quickly kill businesses with asset freezes before the business has an opportunity to defend itself.
3. Such expansive power without proper protections will create fear and uncertainty among business owners, harming the American economy.

It is important to protect consumers from being scammed out of money. With that said, Congress has already appropriately provided a remedy for that with §19 while maintaining and upholding the rights of all U.S. citizens—business owners and consumers.

Many others have a similar view. See the eight amici curiae filed October 1-2, 2020 below: 

• ​Americans For Prosperity Foundation
• Chamber of Commerce of The United States of America, National Retail Federation, and Direct Selling Association
• Washington Legal Foundation and Allied Educational Foundation
• TechFreedom
• Surescripts
• The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America
• The New Civil Liberties Alliance
• SBH A&I

Mr. President, I’d like to thank you for the invitation to speak and bring much-needed attention to the reform to the rulemaking process used by the regulatory agencies.

I operate a family-owned business in Fairbanks, Alaska.  We purchased some land for our business about 20 years ago so we could move operations out of town to the new facility and expand our facilities.  We’ve spent the better part of 10 years and over $300,000 fighting with the regulatory agencies over the arbitrary and capricious nature of the Army Corps of Engineers wetland designation and their use of the Alaska supplement versus the 1987 congressionally-mandated Wetlands Manual.

This is effort is also — this effort does not include the time and energy put forth by the Pacific Legal Foundation on our behalf.  I’d like to thank those folks as well.
The last straw for us is when we lost our appeal in the Ninth Circuit Court when they held that the agencies can make the regulations they want and require without congressional approval or oversight.
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I’m hopeful that the changes made today — with this executive order, other land owners will not be negatively impacted as we have.  Thank you again for this opportunity.

Well, thank you for having me, today, and my wife Morgan and my son, Roaman.  I work as welder in Wyoming, and about five years ago, when I applied for a stock pond permit for my private property, I had no idea that the EPA would come knocking at my door and threaten me and my family — civilly, criminally, and a fine of $37,500 per day.  The fines were up to $16 million when Pacific Legal Foundation stepped in and sued the EPA on my behalf, and my family.
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And, at that point, the EPA changed their attitude; we were able to come to an agreement.  We won our case, but unlike a lot of other middle class Americans, that’s not the case.  They — we could have never fought.  The litigation was way, way too expensive.  So I’d just like to thank the President today for signing this executive order, which will hold the EPA and other government agencies more responsible for their actions.  Thank you.

My name is Kevin Lunny.  I’m a third-generation cattle rancher at the Point Reyes National Seashore in California.
About several years ago, we also were the owners of the Drakes Bay oyster farm — a sustainable family business where we produced nearly half of all the oysters in the state of California.

In 2014, the National Park Service launched a National Environmental Policy Act process that costs millions of dollars and lasted over eight years.  And the National Park Service forced our oyster farm out of business.  And if that wasn’t enough for our family and our community, today the rest of agriculture, which includes about another 24 ranching family farm businesses within the National Seashore, are facing the exact same process.

Our fear is that that process could ultimately be facing — and those families may be facing what the oyster farm faced.  And so I’m here, Mr. President, thanking you for calling this meeting together so we can have this discussion.  We urge you to continue your good work in following these policies and making sure these federal policies are managed in a way that family farmers and ranchers like us can actually benefit and survive these procedures and — so they’re not just for federal agencies that have pre-decided what they want before the process has begun and for professional litigants that abuse the process.
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Thank you, Mr. President.