Antitrust Law Daily Wrap Up, ANTITRUST NEWS: Grassley, Klobuchar reintroduce AICOA in Senate, (Jun 12, 2026)

By Jeff Williams, TR Daily

The bill would allow the Department of Justice, FTC, and state attorneys general to challenge online platforms for discriminatory or exclusionary conduct.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.) have reintroduced the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA) (S 4746), which would generally prohibit large online platforms like Amazon.com, Inc., Google LLC, Meta Platforms, Inc., and Apple, Inc., from giving unfair preference to their own products and services over those of competitors.

“This bipartisan solution will expand consumer choice, empower online innovation and help lower prices, while protecting the popular digital services Americans know and love,” Mr. Grassley said in a press release.

Among its provisions, the measure would allow the Justice Department, the Federal Trade Commission, and state attorneys general to file civil actions to challenge “discriminatory or exclusionary conduct that harms competition,” the press release said.

In addition to prohibiting covered platforms for “[u]nfairly favoring their own products and services,” the bill would, among other things, prohibit: “[m]isusing nonpublic business-user data to copy and compete against small businesses”; “[u]nfairly limiting competitors’ access to key platform features”; “[b]locking business users from accessing or moving their own data from one digital platform to another”; and “[c]onditioning companies’ access to the platform, or product placement on the platform, on purchase or use of unrelated services.”

The legislation includes “safeguards to preserve safety, privacy, and popular services,” the release said, such as language that would “ensure covered platforms can defend conduct necessary to comply with the law, prevent fraud or protect safety, privacy, nonpublic data or platform security.”

In addition, the bill “does not authorize the DOJ, FTC or state attorneys general to dictate AI development, product design, ranking policy or content outcomes,” the release said.

Sen. Klobuchar said in the release that, “As dominant digital platforms—some of the biggest companies our world has ever seen—increasingly give preference to their own products and services, we must ensure small businesses and entrepreneurs still have the opportunity to succeed in the digital marketplace.”

The press release noted that numerous companies, groups, and others support the bill, including Mozilla, the Digital Progress Institute, the Teamsters, Public Knowledge, and the Internet Accountability Project.

In a separate release, Patrick Gallaher, senior policy advocate at Public Knowledge, said that the legislation “restores fairness to the digital marketplace by forcing Big Tech to compete for consumers on a level playing field.”

TechNet President and Chief Executive Officer Linda Moore criticized the bill in a statement, saying that the measure would “undermine the marketplace model that gives sellers more ways to reach customers, and consumers more places to compare prices and find value.”

Computer & Communications Industry Association President and CEO Matt Schruers also criticized the measure.

“The re-introduced AICOA flips competition law on its head: punishing success, not harms,” he said. “If enacted, this legislation would increase prices, open the door to politicized lawsuits, and shutter American innovation.”

In another statement, Incompas CEO Chip Pickering said that the reintroduction of AICOA “is a disappointing step backward that threatens the internet economy and imports foreign regulations that have been proven to chill innovation.”

News: Antitrust