If you think your business has been unfairly targeted by the Federal Trade Commission, you may be right. And the best strategy to prevent overreach is to hire dedicated FTC defense attorneys who will make the best arguments and keep making them until there is success. The recent overturning of the FTC’s “Click-to-Cancel” Rule is a good example of this. Love or hate the Rule, the businesses that challenged the Rule hired lawyers who made the best arguments, and those lawyers kept making the arguments until they succeeded.
As reported here, in a recent decision, the federal Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the “Click-to-Cancel” Rule that had been adopted by the FTC earlier in 2025. In brief, the Rule impacted businesses offering monthly (or other periodic) subscription services for various goods and services. Under the now-overturned Rule, such businesses would have had to make cancellation of the subscription “as easy as” signing up for the service. So, if a consumer signed up and joined the “Sweater-of-the-Month Club,” for example, the company providing the products would have had to make it “easy” to cancel the subscription. Consumer advocacy groups have long complained that many subscription-based service companies impose significant hurdles to cancellation, leading to consumers receiving products that they did not really want and having to pay recurring fees that they could not avoid.
The case shows that, when defending against new FTC rulemaking, persistence pays. The FTC has been trying for many years to promulgate some sort of “easy” online cancellation requirement. The FTC finally issued the proposed Rule, but as noted, it was successfully challenged. In this case, the successful challenge was related to the requirement that the FTC conduct and publish a preliminary regulatory analysis before imposing the Rule. Essentially, if a federal agency determines that a proposed Rule will impose significant costs on impacted businesses, an analysis must be conducted and published for comment. In this case, the FTC found that the new Rule would impose on businesses more than $100 million annually, both in administrative costs and lost business. The FTC’s failure to conduct and publish the regulatory analysis led the Eighth Circuit to overturn the Rule. The FTC has three basic options at this point: appeal the case to the Supreme Court, start over again, or abandon the Rule.
It must be noted that the FTC was criticized for procedural failures. The court did not address the merits of the Rule or comment on the wisdom/validity of requiring an “easy” method of subscription cancellation. It should also be noted that some State-level lawmakers are addressing the problem by statute, rather than via rulemaking. For example, California passed a statute in 2024 that essentially requires what the FTC Rule would have required. Of course, the California law only applies to businesses that either reside in California or conduct business there. The FTC Rule would have had a national effect.
Contact The FTC Defense Attorneys At Revision Legal
For more information, contact the experienced FTC Defense Lawyers at Revision Legal. You can contact us through the form on this page or call (855) 473-8474.
