• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, March 18, 2025

The Federal Trade Commission is asking a federal appellate court to reject advertising and business organizations' challenge to click-to-cancel rules that aim to let consumers easily terminate recurring subscriptions to newspapers, gyms, and other businesses.

The agency argues in an appellate brief filed Monday that such subscriptions “can benefit sellers and consumers,” but adds that many people “are enrolled unwittingly and go months or years without discovering how much money they are losing through recurring charges.”

“Once consumers discover the charges and try to cancel a subscription they signed up for online, they often face unnecessary obstacles from sellers who force them to endure multiple phone calls, long hold times, and countless automated menus,” the FTC writes in papers filed with the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The agency's filing comes in response to a lawsuit brought by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, Michigan Press Association, NCTA -- The Internet & Television Association, Chamber of Commerce and other business groups that are seeking to invalidate the rules.

Among other terms, the click-to-cancel rules require companies to offer a “simple” cancellation mechanism, and allow consumers to cancel subscriptions through the same medium that was used to purchase them. The rules also provide that cancellation mechanisms must be “at least as easy to use” as the sign-up mechanisms.

In practice, the requirements mean that businesses that accept subscriptions through online platforms must also allow people to cancel through an online platform.

The regulations were passed last October in a 3-2 vote. Both Republicans on the commission, including current chair Andrew Ferguson, voted against passage.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau and other challenges argued in a brief filed with the 8th Circuit that the rules are too broad because they affect a wide swath of industries.

“By definition, a Rule that targets over a billion commonplace contracts used by 220 million American consumers and businesses in every industry from newspapers to health care” is not specific, the organizations argue.

The FTC counters in its new filing that nothing prevents it from passing rules that affect more than one industry, adding that it has done so in the past.

“While some Commission rules are industry-specific, the Commission has consistently promulgated industry-agnostic or multi-industry rules,” the FTC writes in an appellate brief filed Monday with the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The agency points to examples including the “mail order rule,” which provides that catalogue companies, mail-order sellers and online retailers notify consumers of shipping delays, and allow people to cancel orders due to shipping postponements.

“Had Congress not wanted the Commission to maintain these cross-industry rules, it would have prohibited those rulemakings,” the FTC writes.

The challengers also argued that the FTC didn't define key terms in the rules -- including the words “easy” and “simple.”

But the FTC writes that it has provided guidance on those terms -- including in a 2021 enforcement policy statement.

Earlier this year, a three-judge panel of the 8th Circuit rejected the challengers request to temporarily block enforcement of the rules. That ruling was only preliminary, and the court can still strike down the rules after considering new arguments.