Pantsuits and Lawsuits with Attorneys General Kris Mayes and Dana Nessel

You Down with FTC? Yeah You Know Me!

• Attorneys General Kris Mayes & Dana Nessel

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Ever wonder who's fighting for fairness when corporations grow too powerful? Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel and Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes pull back the curtain on the world of antitrust enforcement with special guest Lina Khan, the groundbreaking former Chair of the Federal Trade Commission.

This episode of Pantsuits and Lawsuits kicks off with a stark warning: without strong federal support, states like Michigan are left powerless against corporate abuse. AGs Nessel and Mayes join FTC Chair Lina Khan to unpack how weakened consumer protections, corporate mergers, and AI-driven “surveillance pricing” are putting everyday Americans at risk—and what’s being done to fight back. 

Throughout the episode, one message resonates clearly: corporate accountability requires vigilant state-federal partnerships that stand firm against powerful interests. As Khan notes, there's growing energy among young lawyers wanting to become "trust busters" - providing hope that the next generation is ready to continue this essential work.

Check our department websites and social media to stay updated on our ongoing efforts to protect consumers from corporate abuses that affect your daily life.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

Welcome back to Pantsuits and Lawsuits, your favorite podcast, to hear about the pressing legal issues making waves in America today.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

And we are so happy to have Arizona General Kris Mayes back for today's episode. I don't know if last time, if you were sick or on vacation, or maybe you temporarily joined a cult or you know you're hiking the Appalachian Trail, as it were.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

I don't know, I checked my calendar. I was actually on a plane on my way back from Oregon where we had our AG Town Hall up there with Dan Rayfield.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

So that's where it was. That's a likely excuse.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

I'll have to see video to confirm that, but we're happy to have you back here today Thank you, dana and our focus for today's discussion is going to be antitrust and monopoly law. So let's get started. As everybody knows, consumer protection is a crucial pillar of our work as attorneys general. You have a right to be treated fairly when you spend your hard-earned money, and antitrust monopoly laws exist to keep businesses honest, protect the interests of workers and consumers and, frankly, to generate competition and innovation among entrepreneurs.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

Yeah, and later in the episode we are so excited to have on former chair of the Federal Trade Commission, Lina Kahn, to talk about how our state AG offices work in concert with the Federal Government to protect our economy against the threat of monopolies. And, of course, the FTC is the federal government's main enforcer of federal consumer protection laws. And the FTC works with state AGs to protect consumers from fraud, deception and so many other unlawful business practices. We think a lot about what the world is going to look like, and actually starting to look like, without a lot of the federal agency involvement that we're used to, and what it looks like to have the states just operating on their own, when we're used to teaming up with the FTC. And I will say from the perspective of the state of Michigan I don't know how else to phrase this we're just screwed. We are absolutely screwed without the FTC. There are a lot of differences, I think, between Michigan and Arizona. Arizona, from what I can tell, has some pretty substantial consumer protection laws and regulations and in Michigan we absolutely don't. We're one of the worst

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

Is that right? So is that both on the consumer fraud level and the antitrust level, or just antitrust laws.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

No, it's both. We had some really bad rulings for a time period where we called it the Engler Court.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

John Engler was a three-term governor before you couldn't have three-term governors anymore. Extremely conservative, extremely pro-business, anti-consumer, I would argue. And he stocked the Michigan Supreme Court and they took many of our consumer protection laws those at least that existed and just defanged them in every way possible to make it almost impossible to bring consumer protection actions under the state law, which is why we have to rely on the feds so often on these lawsuits. And but for us working with the FTC, a lot of the lawsuits that you potentially could independently bring in Arizona, we can't bring it all in Michigan.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

That's insane.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

So you know, I look at a lot of the things that we've worked with the FTC on, including things like hospital mergers, which I'm sure you're facing in Arizona as well, and just how detrimental that is for healthcare.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

And it's not just the price, of course, that consumers have to pay, it's the fact that hospitals just are eliminated wholesale and in more rural areas just don't exist at all anymore.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

Yeah, I mean absolutely true. And even here in Arizona, where we have pretty good consumer fraud laws and an antitrust law, like most states that have both of those, we still depend on the FTC for a lot of I don't know, for lack of a better word horsepower. And, as you know, like antitrust cases are amongst the most expensive cases to bring, you have to have economics experts. You know almost always have to have an economist on board, not necessarily the case when you have just a pure consumer fraud case against a company or an individual, but antitrust cases are really complicated and so on the Kroger Albertsons case, we joined the FTC in suing to block that proposed merger on antitrust grounds and other grounds and I don't know that we could have done that case without the FTC, which paid for a lot of the experts that we really needed in that case.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

And even, as you suggested, even where you do have the laws in place, we just don't have the staff for it.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

Right.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

And again I mean, can you imagine the cost of hiring these expert witnesses that you absolutely need to have to challenge these cases? And I look at the cases that we have brought together with the FTC and whether you're talking about Meta or Google or Amazon, I mean, my God, the resources that these companies, some of the biggest companies in the world, some of the most well-resourced companies in the world the number of lawyers that they can hire is more lawyers than probably we have on staff combined in our two offices. If you look at the total budget for the Michigan Department of Attorney General and the Arizona Department of Attorney General, I bet that probably pales in comparison to what they just pay their lawyers on these cases alone, these companies. How would we manage it without help from the feds?

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

I don't know.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

This is an area that, as you know also, I have to bring up my past as a utility regulator that I feel passionately about. I used to regulate monopolies and the difference here is these are, by and large, companies that have no regulation unless you have a strong FTC or a strong DOJ or AGs that are willing to police them when they get too big and when they hurt consumers.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

Yeah, and that's one of the big problems that we have, speaking about utilities and monopolies. You know we have regulated monopolies in Michigan for gas and electricity, right, propane, whatnot, and we have a huge problem. We have some of the highest rates in the country and some of the worst service. And even though I, as the attorney general, have the authority to intervene in these cases and to challenge them, I would argue our Michigan Public Service Commission, who makes those decisions, doesn't have all the authority they need and they also don't have, quite honestly, the guts to really take on the utilities the way they should. And that's bad for consumers, it's bad for service and, of course, it's bad for the amounts that our rate payers are stuck with. And it's why this kind of thing I mean it's so incredibly important to have a good regulator who is strong and who's not afraid to shy away from the tough fights. And that's another thing I'll say about Lina Kahn is sometimes she got criticized because she lost cases.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

But I would argue that's because she took on cases that nobody else had ever been willing to take on and in doing so, even when she lost cases, there were lots of companies out there that were like we're not even going to attempt this merger because it's very likely that Lina Kahn is going to take us on if we do it and we know that we might lose in court and it's just not worth it to us. So it's also the deterrence effect of bringing those cases sometimes.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

You know, you make a really, really good point, which is, when you have good regulation and a strong regulator, there's so much that won't happen, so many bad things that won't happen that we will never know didn't happen. Right, we're never going to know how much proposed M&A, mergers and acquisition, didn't happen as a result of the fact that people knew that Lina Kahn was on the beat, right, and so I don't know. I guess I'm still hoping that the FTC will maintain the spirit of Lina Khan. I'm not convinced, given everything that we've seen, but time will tell. Time will tell what it looks like.

Lina Khan:

Hey there

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

Hey Lina how are you?

Lina Khan:

Good, nice to see you again, Kris.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

yeah, it's so great to meet you

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

So we are so fortunate to have Lina Khan uh, the former chairwoman of the FTC, on with us and uh I I have to say off the top what a huge fan I am of you, Lina, and I know Dana is as well, and one of the highlights of my time as the Attorney General of Arizona, I think, is always going to be the work that we had a chance to do together while you were the head of the FTC. I guess my first question to you is in your time at the FTC, did you have any favorites or cases that you thought were amazing and interesting and just sort of really rose to the top "of Well, wow, this was fascinating.

Lina Khan:

Well, first of all, thanks so much for having me on. I mean, state AGs are such a key partner to the FTC and really our first line of defense against so much of the corporate law breaking that really hurts people in their day-to-day lives. So it was just so grateful to get to work with each of you in your offices. I mean, it's hard to pick a single favorite, there was just so much activity on all fronts. I guess I'll pick a couple.

Lina Khan:

We were very focused on these things called non-compete clauses, these contractual provisions that basically lock workers into their current job by preventing them to go work for a competitor or go start their own business. And these started off in the boardroom but now affect security guards and janitors and fast food workers, and we finalized a rule that would ban these non-competes. That's now being litigated. But we also brought some lawsuits, actually, including one taking on this security guard company that had imposed non-competes on security guards making close to minimum wage, including a whole bunch who lived in Michigan and you know these security guards, when they had better opportunities, were hit with lawsuits of tens of thousands of dollars preventing them from going to switch to another employer. So we took action. The companies ended up dropping non-competes for thousands of workers, and so those are people that are now free to be able to move to other jobs that are a better fit for them, that are offering them higher wages.

Lina Khan:

We were also very focused on subscription traps. So companies, increasingly, have made it very easy to sign up for a subscription, but absurdly difficult to cancel, where you have to call somebody or navigate this maze online and the goal is to prevent you from canceling, so you're stuck paying hundreds of dollars a month. We took action against those tactics and have also finalized a rule requiring that companies make it as easy to cancel a subscription as it is to sign up. So I would say those are two favorites.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

When I really learned to understand the danger of these non-compete clauses it was actually in the height of COVID and there were all these nurses that I found were bound by non-compete clauses, that wanted to work at multiple different hospitals and they were prohibited from doing so. And I'm like these are just regular nurses that might work in the ER. There wasn't some top secret, confidential information that they had. I mean, it was terrible to limit the amount of work that healthcare professionals could do and it just horrified me and I had no understanding of that until I saw how it was in practice.

Lina Khan:

Yeah, that's such a good point, and we actually heard from thousands of healthcare workers across the country sharing stories just like that one and noting that, especially in rural areas, oftentimes the choice they face is switch employers and abandon their patients or stay stuck in a work situation that's not good for them, and so non-competes can just have an outsized effect in really hurting doctors and healthcare workers' ability to fully provide for their patients.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

That's so interesting, so, very true. So you know,Lina, Lina l L L Lna, one of the things Dana and I were talking about before you got on was just how important the FTC is to the states and our ability to bring antitrust cases. At a young age, you have really revived antitrust law in America in a lot of ways and as the head of the FTC, one of the things that you did for state AGs is, you know, really sort of be the engine that helps to bring the resources to bear on these incredibly complicated cases and expensive cases. Can you speak to that sort of your vision of the FTC and why the FTC is so important to protecting consumers in that way?

Lina Khan:

Yeah, I mean.

Lina Khan:

The FTC was created 110 years ago against the backdrop of the robber barons and the industrial trusts that had concentrated so much power and were using that power to hurt consumers, to abuse workers, to really squeeze small businesses.

Lina Khan:

And so Congress created the agency to really make sure that our markets had fair competition and that firms that had accumulated a lot of market power were not able to abuse that power and not able to keep other viable businesses out of the market. And so there's a long history here of the FTC assertively protecting the American people from corporate lawbreaking. The Kroger Albertsons merger is a great example. That would have been the largest supermarket merger in US history, and our investigation found that it would basically reduce choices for consumers and shoppers, resulting in higher prices, and also reduce options for grocery store workers in ways that would undermine their power as well. And so we were so thrilled to get to partner with your office and other AGs to file a suit and successfully block that merger to make sure that, especially at a time where people are being squeezed and already paying too much at the grocery store, we're not depriving them of more choice in ways that will lead to higher prices.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

You know. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what's happening at the FTC now. And obviously we know that President Trump has, in our opinion, illegally fired or removed a couple of the Democratic-appointed commissioners from the board of the FTC I think AG Mayes and I both filed amicus briefs on their behalf and the mass layoffs at the FTC. What is that going to mean for the agency and their ability to protect consumers, protect other businesses and to make sure that the law is being properly enforced?

Lina Khan:

I mean the firing of commissioners Slaughter and Bedoya were extremely troubling and flagrant violation of existing Supreme Court precedent and it sends a really troubling sign to try to knock out the Democratic commissioners. And it just leads the question why? What are you trying to do that you don't want other people to get insight into? And this is all happening just as we're seeing major CEOs and top executives go to the Oval Office and seek certain sweetheart deals, asking for existing lawsuits to go away, and it just creates a real disturbing suggestion that maybe the law will not be enforced impartially, without fear or favor, but instead could be enforced to punish enemies and reward friends, and that's one of the biggest worries I have right now.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

You know I mean I was telling Dana earlier I noticed a headline where I think the FTC made a filing in a case where they said, where they were already involved in the case, where they said they weren't going to have the resources to continue prosecuting the case, and then I think they backed off of that, if I recall correctly. Is that the kind of thing we should be looking at? Or different results where they're not taking cases where they obviously should take a case or bring a case? What should we be looking at?

Lina Khan:

So the FTC has a very active litigation docket right now because we were so active in the last few years, and so I think we all need to monitor, especially in instances where the agency has already defeated efforts to dismiss the case.

Lina Khan:

Are they suspiciously going to just withdraw those cases or enter into settlements that are actually doing a disservice to the public and settling for pennies on the dollar in ways that really rip the American people off? The other thing I'll just give a very specific example. When I was at the FTC, we investigated a big oil merger, and what we discovered through that was that one of the top CEOs, a gentleman called Scott Sheffield, had actually been privately communicating with OPEC officials and foreigners about how it might be best if they all restrict oil production so that prices stay high rather than low. And the FTC took action. We prevented that individual from joining the board of Exxon just to limit his influence and prevent him from replicating these tactics at an even bigger firm. And recently I just saw the FTC is now asking whether they should in fact withdraw that order and allow this executive to get away scot-free. And so you know, some of this is kind of in the trenches and the weeds, but that's exactly the type of thing I'm worried about.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

That is fascinating. And this is one of the most fascinating things I think about you, which is that you have managed to do what very few leaders in American society today have done, which is you have built popularity and support among both Republicans and Democrats and independents all three areas. People on both sides of the aisle love your work and you had almost a cult following, I think amongst even some Republicans. One could say People really, really like what you're doing. I think it speaks to the importance of what you were and are doing. Why do you think that is? I mean, obviously I have my own theories, but what do you think was going on there?

Lina Khan:

I mean it's a really fascinating part of this work that there is a real organic hunger to take on corporate abuse, right.

Lina Khan:

I mean, nobody likes getting ripped off, be it at the grocery store, be it by our healthcare system. And I think when you have, you know, government leaders standing up to corporate abuse and kind of protecting people from that type of lawbreaking in ways that's really designed to make people's lives better, right, be it protecting them from illegal surveillance by data brokers that are kind of harvesting data on kids, be it, you know, making sure that our healthcare markets are fair and competitive so that you don't have big pharma companies or big middlemen illegally jacking up the price of life-saving drugs. I mean, this work just has deep popularity and I think people feel that for too long, especially at the federal government level, you know, we had too much timidity and kind of a willingness to go hard against the small players, but kind of looking away when it was really big companies that were violating the law. And so we brought an approach that was even handed and said look, if you're violating the law and hurting the American people, we're going to take action.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

That is really, really true. One other thing I wanted to ask you about while we have the chance is and you dealt with this aggressively, I think, while you were the head of the FTC is just the growth of technology and the use of technology to harm consumers. How do we both guard against that but not stifle technology and the growth of technology and commerce?

Lina Khan:

Yeah, I mean, look, technological progress and innovation have huge capacity to make people's lives better.

Lina Khan:

I think what we were looking to be vigilant around was making sure that these technologies were not being abused and that firms weren't using the claims of innovation to actually cover for what is lawbreaking, and so we were very focused on making sure that these AI tools are not being abused.

Lina Khan:

We already were seeing a surge in complaints around things like voice cloning, where people were using AI tools to pretend to be somebody's grandkid or child in distress and ask for thousands of dollars to be wired over, and that's something that we've kind of vigorously sought to crack down on. I think another big source of abuse that we've seen is just all of the personal data that's being collected on all of us every day, including very personal data like geolocation data, your entire browser history, sometimes your health data, and for that type of information to be just sold online to the highest bidder leads to so much abuse. Be it, you know, stalking to kind of vigilante justice, where this stuff is being used to prosecute women who are making personal choices about their medical care, and so you know, I think there's a lot of progress that can come with these new technological innovations, but also abuse, and that's what we needed to guard against.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

In an alternate universe, if President Harris had reappointed you to your position, what would be the type of stuff that you would be looking most closely at right now and, if you could, what kind of cases? You don't have to name specific companies, but what would you really be cracking down on now that you view to be the biggest threat, not just to consumers but, as we've talked about, to just traditional, non-crony forms of capitalism where you have true competition?

Lina Khan:

So we've all seen that housing costs have become a big pain point for people over the last few years, and the type of work that AG Mayes has done to make sure that landlords are not using algorithms to price fix is incredibly important. At the FTC, we also were looking very closely at certain cities and regions where big institutional hedge funds had actually bought up a lot of housing and that was contributing as well to higher prices and worse conditions. We brought several lawsuits against some of the biggest corporate landlords for all sorts of abusive practices where they would advertise one rent so that people would then pay the application fee, but then, once they signed the lease, they realized that there were hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars in additional fees, like a portal fee that you have to pay just to pay your rent or a waste management fee, and this really was, you know, recruiting the tenants that didn't know they'd be on the hook for so much money. So I think just generally continuing to focus on housing would have been a big priority. I think our work on non-competes was great, but there are a lot of ways that American workers are getting nickeled and dimed and pushed around and messed around.

Lina Khan:

We are very focused on these gig platforms that can again provide benefits but also really abuse their power.

Lina Khan:

One thing that I was most excited to get to keep working on, if we'd had more time, was this issue of surveillance pricing, where companies can use all of our personal data to actually set person-specific prices, so they could know, for example, that you just got an email announcing funeral arrangements for a loved one who passed away, and so you need to buy a plane ticket, and maybe they could charge you higher prices because you know that you're buying something with not a lot of time. Or maybe they know that a family has a nut allergy, and so they charge that family a higher price for the nut-free cereal, right? I mean, we're quickly entering into a world where the type of data these companies have about us can allow them to exploit our specific needs and behaviors, and so I think that's something to monitor. We also could see that on the wage side, where different workers could be paid different amounts for the exact same work just based on their data profile, and so I think that's something we're going to have to keep monitoring.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

And how will it ever be affordable for any of us to go to a Taylor Swift concert ever again?

Lina Khan:

I know Great question. So the Justice Department filed a lawsuit against Ticketmaster, claiming all sorts of illegal practices that kept the competition out. At the FTC we also finalized a rule requiring that these companies actually be honest about what the price is. So often, be it on Ticketmaster or other platforms, you see a ticket for $75, but then by the time you check out it's actually $130. And it's almost double the price just through service fees and convenience fees and all these fees that you don't actually know what you're getting and they're unavoidable. And so we finalized a rule that says you have t f pricing.

Lina Khan:

What are you doing now, and what kinds of things can we expect coming from you in the near future?

Lina Khan:

One of the things that I'm most focused on is making sure we're fully harnessing the interest and energy among young people and young lawyers and college students. I mean, I get dozens of emails a week from students saying you know, I saw the work about the FTC and I want to be a trust buster, and how do I do that? And so I think there's big need to create infrastructure to make sure that we have more of a standing army of people who can kind of come in and help us govern in ways that fully protect people from corporate abuse. So that's something I'll be doing. I think there's actually just still a lot more kind of policy and research and intellectual work that needs to be done to fully uncover the full set of tools that we're going to need to use in government. If, hopefully, we get another chance to govern again at the federal level, and especially as our agencies are being dismantled, figuring out what that should all look like on the other side is going to be really important too.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

But that worries me too. Dana and I and the other Democratic AGs are working our hearts out to try to prevent the Trump administration from illegally firing thousands, if not tens of thousands, of federal workers, most of whom are doing a fantastic job. But what does that look like after all of this happens, and how do we rebuild?

Lina Khan:

It's such a key question. I mean, look at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau I know you know both of you have worked with. They've totally dismantled that and are looking to fire you know the vast majority of people there and that's going to take a while to rebuild. But I think it's also going to be important to figure out how do we make sure that the genuine obstacles that agencies do have to act more quickly and to make sure that agencies are actually able to materially improve people's lives in ways that are immediately visible. I think we're going to have to fix for that, because I do worry one of the things that created an opening for Musk and his cronies to kind of come in and with the chainsaw was that people sometimes don't fully see all the ways that government is helping them in a day-to-day sense, and so to the extent there were obstacles to that self-imposed red tape or other kind of ways that oftentimes corporate interests are limiting the capacity of government, that we're kind of clear-eyed about making sure we're taking that on too.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

Well, we appreciate all the hard work that you did at the FTC for the time that you were there, and your other government service as well, and I think I speak for both myself and AG Mayes when we say that we hope to see you someday back in government service, because the work that you did in the time that you were with the federal government was just absolutely breathtaking.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

Same here from Arizona. Arizonans, love you, come back and see us soon.

Lina Khan:

Well, thanks to each of you I mean your offices and your teams just do such critical work, and I know that is due to your kind of courageous leadership and standing up to the biggest interest, even when it, you know, means upsetting some folks.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

Well, that's all the time we have. So, for more information and to stay up to date on our ongoing lawsuits, be sure to check our department websites and, of course, follow us on social media .

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

we'll be back soon with more discussions about the latest and greatest legal news impacting american communities like yours.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

So thanks for listening to Pantsuits and Lawsuits and we'll see you next time.