Amicus Curiae Brief — AMG Capital Management, LLC, et al., Petitioners v. Federal Trade Commission

No. 19-508

In the

Supreme Court of the United States

AMG CAPITAL MANAGEMENT, LLC, et al.,

Petitioners,

v.

FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION,

Respondent.

On Writ of Certiorari to the United States

Court of A ppeals for the Ninth Circuit

BRIEF OF AMICUS CURIAE TRUTH

IN ADVERTISING, INC. IN SUPPORT

OF RESPONDENT

Bonnie L. Patten

Laura D. Smith

Truth in A dvertising, Inc.

115 Samson Rock Drive, Suite 2

Madison, Connecticut 06443

David T. Goldberg

Counsel of Record

Donahue, Goldberg, Weaver

& Littleton

1008 Pennsylvania Avenue, SE

Washington, DC 20003

(212) 334-8813

david@donahuegoldberg.com

Counsel for Amicus Curiae

300430

A

(800) 274-3321 • (800) 359-6859

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Table of Authorities .................................................. iii

Interest of Amicus Curiae .......................................... 1

Introduction and Summary of Argument ................. 3

ARGUMENT .............................................................. 7

I. Courts’ long-recognized power to order

restitution in appropriate Section 13(b)

cases is vitally important to protecting

consumers and the economy ................................. 7

II. Section 13(b) is not properly read as

withholding courts’ historic power to order,

in appropriate cases, return of profits

obtained through the unlawful practices

the court enjoins ................................................. 13

A. The text of Section 13(b) may

not be construed as withholding

restorative relief ............................................ 13

B. Section 19 does not—and could not—

supply a basis for interpreting Section 13(b)

to withhold judicial power to award

restorative relief ............................................ 22

ii

III. Disabling Section 13(b) enforcement would

result in real and far-reaching consumer

and market harm ............................................... 30

Conclusion ................................................................ 32

iii

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES

Page(s)

Cases:

California v. American Stores,

495 U.S. 271 (1990) ................................. 14, 17, 18

Carter Products, Inc. v. FTC,

268 F.2d 461 (9th Cir. 1959)............................... 29

Fashion Originators' Guild of America v. FTC,

312 U.S. 457 (1941) ............................................ 11

Frank v. Poertner,

136 S. Ct.1453 (2016) (Mem.) .............................. 2

FTC v. Abbot & Co., 1 F.T.C. 16 .............................. 30

FTC v. Amy Travel Serv., Inc.,

875 F.2d 564 (7th Cir. 1989)............................... 29

FTC v. Credit Bureau Ctr., LLC,

937 F.3d 764 (7th Cir. 2019)........................... 8, 15

FTC v. Direct Mktg. Concepts, Inc.,

624 F.3d 1 (1st Cir. 2010) ................................... 29

FTC v. Gem Merch. Corp.,

87 F.3d 466 (11th Cir. 1996)........................... ….26

iv

FTC v. Quincy Bioscience Holding Co., Inc.,

753 Fed.Appx. 87 (2nd Cir. 2019) ........................ 2

FTC v. QT, Inc., 512 F.3d 858 (7th Cir. 2008) .......... 9

FTC v. Sec. Rare Coin & Bullion Corp.,

931 F.2d 1312, 1314-1315 (8th Cir. 1991 ........... 25

FTC v. Southwest Sunsites, Inc.,

665 F.2d 611 (5th Cir. 1982)............................... 16

FTC v. Wyndham Worldwide Corp.,

799 F.3d 236 (3rd Cir. 2015) .............................. 24

Great-West Life v. Knudson,

534 U.S.204, 211 n.1, (2002)............................... 18

Heater v. FTC,

503 F.2d 321 (9th Cir. 1974)........................ 23, 24

Hecht Co. v. Bowles, 321 U.S. 321 (1944) ................ 27

Kansas v. Nebraska, 574 U.S. 445 (2015) ............... 27

Landgraf v. USI Film Prods,

511 U.S. 244 (1994) ............................................. 19

Liu v. SEC, 140 S. Ct. 1936 (2020) ............... 15,18, 24

v

Meghrig v. KFC Western, Inc.,

516 U.S. 479 (1996) ............................................ .18

Nken v. Holder, 556 U.S. 418 (2009) ................. 14, 17

Porter v. Warner Holding Co.,

328 U.S. 395 (1946) ........................................ 3, 18

Romag Fasteners, Inc v. Fossil, Inc.,

140 S. Ct. 1492 (2020)......................................... 28

Root v. Lake Shore & M.S. Ry. Co,

105 U.S. 189 (1881) ....................................... 17, 18

Schine Chain Theatres v. United States.,

334 U.S. 110 (1948) ........................... 12, 13, 16, 18

Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better Env’t,

523 U.S. 83, 129 (1998) ....................................... 20

Tull v. United States,

481 U.S. 412 (1987) ............................................. 17

United States v. Grote,

961 F.3d 105 (2d Cir. 2020) ................................ 29

Statutes and Rules

12 U.S.C. § 1467a… ................................................. 17

vi

15 U.S.C. § 45(m)(1)(C) ............................................ 27

15 U.S.C. § 53(b)(2) ........................................... passim

15 U.S.C. §57b ................................................... passim

Fed. R. Civ. P. 65… .................................................... 1

Other Materials

Alexander & Schwandt,

The Impact of Car Pollution on Infant and Child

Health: Evidence from Emissions Cheating

(revised 2019) ....................................................... .9

Black’s Law Dictionary (6th ed. 1990…. ................. 14

Black’s Law Dictionary (11th ed. 2019.................... 14

D. Dobbs, Law of Remedies (2d ed. 1993)) .............. 27

Laycock, The Death of The Irreparable

Injury Rule, 103 Harv. L. Rev. 687 (1990) ......... 15

Pitofsky, Beyond Nader,

90 Harv. L. Rev. 661 (1977) ................................. 7

J. Story, Commentaries on Equity Jurisprudence

(9th ed. 1866) ........................................................ 4

Interest of Amicus Curiae1

Truth in Advertising, Inc. (“TINA.org”) is a

nonpartisan,

nonprofit

consumer

advocacy

organization whose mission is to combat deceptive

advertising

and

consumer

fraud;

promote

understanding of the serious harms commercial

dishonesty inflicts; and work with consumers,

businesses, independent experts, and government

agencies to advance countermeasures that are

effective in practice.

At the center of TINA.org’s efforts is its website,

www.tina.org, which aims to re-boot the consumer

movement for the twenty-first century. The site

provides information about common deceptive

advertising techniques, consumer protection laws and

alerts about specific marketing campaigns—such as

nationally advertised “Built in the USA” vans

manufactured abroad and pillows and essential oils

falsely marketed as able to treat chronic disease . The

website functions as a clearinghouse, receiving

consumer complaints about suspicious practices,

which TINA.org investigates, and, when appropriate,

takes up with businesses and regulatory authorities.

The website is a repository of information relating to

consumer protection lawsuits and regulatory actions.

Through its collaborative approach and attention

to emerging issues and complexities, TINA.org has

become a trusted source of expertise on matters

1 Pursuant to Rule 37.6, amicus affirms that no person other

than amicus or counsel funded or made a monetary contribution

intended to fund the preparation or submission of this brief, and

no counsel for a party authored this brief in whole or in part. All

parties have consented to the filing of amicus briefs.

1

relating to consumer fraud. TINA.org regularly draws

on this expertise to advocate for consumer interests

before the FTC and other governmental bodies and

appear as amicus curiae in cases raising important

questions of consumer protection law. For example,

TINA.org participated as amicus in FTC v. Quincy

Bioscience Holding Co., Inc., 753 Fed.Appx. 87 (2nd

Cir. 2019), which reinstated a Section 13(b) suit

against a business falsely marketing a dietary

supplement as clinically proven to improve memory.

TINA.org also has filed briefs in numerous cases—

including in this Court, see Frank v. Poertner, 136 S.

Ct. 1453 (2016) (denying cert.)—involving proposed

settlements in consumer class actions. These

submissions have spotlighted economic realities

particular to that setting that can yield agreements

with large benefits for defendants and attorneys who

negotiate them, but that slight the public interest in

curbing harmful and deceptive marketing practices.

At first blush, this brief—which highlights the

critical importance of court-issued monetary remedies

in cases brought by the FTC and voices objections to

the prohibitory-injunctions-only regime petitioners

urge the Court to impose for Section 13(b) cases—

might appear to be in tension with concerns TINA.org

expressed in Frank, about settlements with large (or

large-seeming) monetary relief provisions, but token

forward-looking relief. There is no inconsistency. Both

submissions reflect TINA.org’s reality-based, “what

works” approach to the false advertising problem—

and commitment to regulatory and remedial

measures that recognize the problem’s complexity, the

challenges of effectively policing for and preventing

dishonest practices, and the massive damage those

practices inflict unless effectively checked.

2

Introduction and Summary of Argument

Petitioners maintain that in granting district

courts power to issue “permanent injunctions” in cases

of unlawful commercial dishonesty, Congress

withheld the power to include return-of-profits relief

in a final decree. Thus, in a case where a federal

district court finds the defendant is violating the FTC

Act’s bedrock prohibition against commercial

deception and where traditional equitable principles

support a decree that both halts the illegality and

dislodges its proceeds—indeed, even in cases of brazen

banditry that have long dominated courts’ Section

13(b) dockets—petitioners contend Congress confined

courts to “sin no more” orders.

Petitioners’ proposed rule should be rejected. For

centuries, Anglo-American courts have recognized

that an equity court’s authority to issue an injunction

against ongoing unlawful, injurious activity carries

with it the power to divest the wrongdoer of profits he

obtained before the court caught up with him. That

practice implements a universally acknowledged

principle of justice that “no man should profit from his

wrongdoing.” More than seven decades ago, this

Court, after affirming that “[n]othing is more the

subject of a suit for injunctive relief than that which

has been illegally acquired and which has given rise

to the necessity for injunctive relief,” Porter v. Warner

Holding Co., 328 U.S. 395, 399 (1946), held that courts

should interpret a statutory grant of injunctive power

as carrying with it this traditional “adjunct,” unless

Congress made a contrary intent unmistakably clear.

I. The statutory setting here and the public

interests at stake attest to the soundness and

continuing importance of the historical equity

3

practices the Porter rule preserves and of this Court’s

long recognition that return-of-profits relief is an

indispensable component of effective injunctive

decrees.

Deceptive marketing and similar forms of

commercial dishonesty are a scourge of the American

economy, inflicting billions of dollars in losses to

cheated consumers and distorting the efficient

allocation of resources, rewarding those who hone

ingenious fraudulent devices and punishing

competitors focused on bringing superior products to

market. Consumer fraud is a classic “market failure.”

And in many product markets, it is practically

impossible for consumers to protect themselves

against such deception.

For decades, consumer advocates and law

reformers have identified—and struggled to

overcome—barriers to the legal system’s ability to

ensure that dishonesty is not a winning business

model. These efforts first focused on fundamental

impracticality of individual common law litigation.

But in ensuing years, it has become clear that modern,

more generous remedies and modes of enforcement

can also fail to operate as intended.

The Section 13(b) restitution remedy at issue is a

conspicuous exception to this pattern of inefficacy.

This Court has recognized that enforcement regimes

that do not allow for decrees that both halt and undo

the unlawful behavior before the court are an exercise

in futility. Return-of-profits relief, moreover, is the

judicial equivalent of “light touch regulation,”

surgically tailored to undoing proven wrongs, while

posing no threat of windfall recovery. Indeed, because

relief issued under Section 13(b) may only be awarded

4

by a court, when under traditional equitable

principles, it provides further protection against

unfairness. The Section 13(b) regime petitioners urge

the Court to tear down also harnesses another historic

hallmark of equity jurisdiction—its focus on making

relief effectual, a vital priority where defendants have

the means and inclination to dissipate assets and

frustrate judicial remedies.

II. Petitioners do not defend the fairness of their

proffered regime. They hardly could, given that every

application would be a fresh violation of a

fundamental principle of justice. Nor do they point to

any tradition of equity courts categorically refusing to

return ill-gotten gains in cases where an order

prohibiting a practice was warranted—nor anywhere

Congress has expressly resolved to separate these

long-intertwined powers and confine a court to issuing

what amounts to cease-and-desist relief. Petitioners

do not seriously maintain that the ninety-third

Congress resolved to do that here—claiming only that

omission of the word “restitution” should or must be

treated as if Congress expressed that intent.

Petitioners and amici address much briefing to a

different provision of the Act—Section 19, which

permits restorative relief in enforcement actions

under the Commission’s administrative adjudication

authority. On their account, Section 19 affords

protections unavailable under Section 13(b), so

permitting the FTC to obtain restitution in a

permanent injunction suit defies that congressional

judgment. A “narrow reading” of Section 13(b), they

insist, advances interests in certainty and fair notice

they claim underlies that judgment.

5

A. On its own terms, and as supplemented with

claims about connotations of “prospectivity”

emanating from the term “injunction,” petitioners’

case for giving legal effect to the “omission” of

restitutionary relief is unconvincing. And it is plainly

insufficient under Porter. That leads petitioners and

amici to urge dispensing with the Porter presumption,

at least in cases where a comparable negative

implication can be asserted (which is to say, every case

it applies to), disparaging it as outmoded or even

constitutionally suspect. There is nothing illegitimate

about history-based canons of construction, and this

one does a better job of effectuating legislative intent

in this context—and of respecting the Constitution’s

distribution of powers—than does a generic rule

treating perceived statutory omissions as purposeful.

But there is a more basic defect in petitioners’

“textual” claim: Their understanding of Section 13(b)

as a whole does not—and cannot—give comparable

effect to any of the other clear expressions and salient

omissions in its statutory language. Their languagebased argument is thus less an invitation to follow an

interpretive canon wherever it leads than to announce

a “principle” good for one negative implication and one

only.

B. Petitioners’ legislative-judgment and anticircumvention arguments fare no better. The premise

that Section 19(a) provides a suite of substantive and

procedural protections absent from Section 13(b)

entails seeing limitations that Section 19’s text

unambiguously forecloses and overlooks protections

afforded under Section 13(b) that are comparable or

even stronger. And it is impossible to read Section

19(a) as setting a floor that fairness and certainty

6

require: Section 19(e) expressly leaves in place

remedies that go further and deter more than Section

13(b) ever could.

III. This Court should not credit petitioners’ and

amici’s assurances—based on the continued

availability of parallel state-law remedies—that

imposing their “narrow construction” of Section 13(b)

would not adversely affect consumer protection. That

claim ignores the central lesson of experience under

consumer protection law: Remedies that are

expansive on paper often prove ineffectual in practice.

It takes nothing away from state enforcers to

recognize that their efforts are not substitutes for

those of the Commission, which has vast expertise,

national jurisdiction, and global reach and is

unimpeded by structural and legal complexities that

challenge state-level efforts to address nationwide

and global misbehavior.

ARGUMENT

I. Courts’ long-recognized power to order restitution

in appropriate Section 13(b) cases is vitally

important to protecting consumers and the

economy.

1. The central premises of modern consumer

protection laws are that marketplace dishonesty is not

simply deplorable in some abstract sense, but

injurious—causing harms against which individual

consumers and businesses cannot practically protect

themselves; and that, if uncorrected, such behavior

seriously impairs the efficient allocation of resources

in the Nation’s market economy. See Pitofsky, Beyond

Nader, 90 Harv. L. Rev. 661 (1977). On this

understanding, some dishonesty is ineffectual or

7

relatively harmless: Consumers don’t expect that a

random donut shop actually serves the “world’s best

coffee”; they can inspect and evaluate many goods for

themselves; and when inexpensive, frequently

purchased items fail to perform as advertised, they

may switch to a competitor’s product. Id.

But many falsehoods and misrepresentations

cannot be discovered until long after purchase. When

an appliance is falsely marketed to last 10 years, the

consumer may not learn that claim was deceptive

until it breaks down after five, and if an ordinary

metal was used, not the space-age alloy claimed, the

consumer may never be able to detect that deception.

The same goes for goods marketed as “Made in

America,” products sold as organic, and health

supplements claimed to contain potent, safe, or pure

ingredients. Likewise, no car buyer could be expected

to have detected deception when a leading automaker

marketed pollution-spewing “clean diesel” vehicles,

whose actual breakthrough technology was software

designed to trick emissions-testing equipment. See

https://www.propublica.org/article/how-vw-paid-25billion-for-dieselgate-and-got-off-easy.

Lying

to

consumers can be a highly successful business

strategy.

Harms to consumers can go beyond pocket-book

injury. As Judge Easterbrook’s opinion in FTC v. QT,

Inc., 512 F.3d 858 (7th Cir. 2008), explained, when

useless products are marketed with false health

claims, consumers can forego therapies that might

actually help. Id. at 863, overruled, FTC v. Credit

Bureau Ctr., LLC, 937 F.3d 764 (7th Cir. 2019). (Some

8

deceptions arguably are worse still, causing injury by

concealing from consumers known dangers.)2

Consumers are not the only parties injured when

false advertising goes unchecked. It typically costs

more to produce organic goods or make products in

America than it costs a dishonest competitor to affix a

label saying that; it is obviously much more expensive

to develop health products that are demonstrably

effective in improving well-being than to lie about

that.

9. These practices inflict systemic damage on the

American economy. Consumer welfare is lost when

money set aside to purchase needed products instead

flows to sellers who lied. Bad advertising can drive out

good: When consumers become suspicious of

advertising claims, persuading them that an honest

representation is true becomes more costly—a special

obstacle for new market entrants, who account for a

disproportionate share of innovative products, but

who must rely on advertising to overcome consumer

wariness. Capital is likewise misdirected to

fraudulently successful businesses or toward

developing detection-avoidance technologies.

In significant ways, these threats have worsened

in recent years. First, the internet dramatically

decreases the cost (to perpetrators) of dishonesty:

Emails and online videos are essentially free, and it is

cheaper to build websites that look like legitimate

2 The Volkswagen scandal exemplifies this. Automobiles

marketed to environmentally conscious consumers as win-win

purchases polluted in quantities that caused thousands of

additional emergency room visits. See Alexander & Schwandt,

The Impact of Car Pollution on Infant and Child Health:

Evidence from Emissions Cheating (revised 2019).

9

businesses than to fabricate brick-and-mortar

operations. It has never been easier to gather data

about and target vulnerable consumers. By contrast,

detecting and combatting fraud have become more

complex and costly: Online shoppers cannot directly

inspect and compare goods before purchasing, nor

complain in-person when they discover they were lied

to; and it is much harder for them, and ultimately law

enforcers, to unearth who perpetrated the fraud and

where they are (or were, before the scam was exposed).

Even internet-based counterstrategies can be

outsmarted; on-line product reviews are not helpful if

positive ones are faked by the seller or negative ones

suppressed. Finally, as the many large and

sophisticated frauds that triggered the 2008 financial

crisis show, established national and multinational

corporations are not “too big (or reputable) to lie.”

Dishonest practices may be simply too remunerative

to resist, and behemoths that have resources to fight

battles of attrition with enforcement authorities can

adopt the “catch me if you can” attitude of fly-by-night

grifters.

3. Because these realities are “market failures,”

the central determinant of whether dishonest

practices can succeed—and inflict greater damage—is

the efficacy of law enforcement. For two generations,

courts, economists, and consumer advocates have

recognized that traditional common law remedies

afford remarkably ineffective consumer protection.

Consumers often do not know they are victims of

fraudulent marketing, and when they do, their

individual injuries can be so relatively small and

difficult to calculate and prove as to rule out hiring a

lawyer—even before accounting for doctrinal

limitations making winning a case almost impossible.

10

Lawsuits by competitors deprived of market share by

rivals’ dishonest marketing have never gained

substantial traction either: Although competitors are

often better positioned to detect harmful, deceptive

practices, they face difficulty proving that a rival’s

unlawful marketing caused a lower-than-expected

market share; in markets where dishonesty is

widespread (as in cigarette sales), participants have

self-interested reasons for not filing suits challenging

competitors’ deceptions; and the reality that litigation

costs are borne by the plaintiff alone, while benefits

redound to all competitors, poses a classic collective

action problem (one made more difficult by the

potential that joint efforts to sanction a misbehaving

rival will raise antitrust flags, see Fashion

Originators’ Guild v. FTC, 312 U.S. 457, 468 (1941)).

Legal reforms designed to overcome these

difficulties have proven unsatisfactory. Studies have

found small-claims court litigation to afford few cost

savings. Relaxed proof standards and enhanced

individual remedies cannot overcome the basic

unattractiveness of litigating complex disputes over

small sums. And while class actions overcome the

problem of individual consumers’ inadequate

incentive to sue, the still-modest personal stakes

make them unlikely to monitor proceedings conducted

in their name, leading to resolutions structured to

benefit the active participants—defendants and class

counsel—while doing little to rein in dishonest

practices.

Similar shortcomings have afflicted the efficacy of

administrative regimes, which do a better job than

private enforcement of targeting the “right”

defendants and avoiding opportunistic settlements.

11

But such regimes’ efficacy in preventing unlawful

practices is undermined by the historic unavailability

in agency proceedings of more than “cease and desist”

relief. Permitting defendants found to be engaged in

unlawful activity to retain the fruits of the illegality

not only is an affront to justice, it also ensures that

public interests in eradicating such misdeeds will be

thwarted. As the Court explained in Schine Chain

Theatres v. United States, 334 U.S. 110 (1948), in

rejecting an argument that courts lacked power to

order those caught violating antitrust laws to divest

themselves of assets acquired in the course of that

conduct:

[A]n injunction against future violations is not

adequate to protect the public interest. If all that

was done was to forbid a repetition of the illegal

conduct, those who had unlawfully built their

empires could preserve them intact [and] retain

the full dividends of their monopolistic practices

and profit from the unlawful restraints of trade

which they had inflicted on competitors. Such a

course would make enforcement of the Act a futile

thing unless perchance the United States moved in

at the incipient stages of the unlawful project. For

these reasons divestiture or dissolution is an

essential feature of these decrees.

Id. 128-29.

The Court then rejected the claim that such “post

hoc” relief was a judicially imposed, extra-statutory

“penalt[y]”:

Like restitution [divestiture] merely deprives a

defendant of the gains from his wrongful conduct.

It is an equitable remedy designed in the public

12

interest to undo what could have been prevented

had the defendants not outdistanced the

government in their unlawful project.

Id.

II. Section 13(b) is not properly read as withholding

courts’ historic power to order, in appropriate

cases, return of profits obtained through the

unlawful practices the court enjoins.

A. The text of Section 13(b) may not be construed as

withholding restorative relief.

Despite petitioners’ and amici’s appeals to fidelity

to “plain language,” they cannot claim that Congress

expressly foreclosed awarding restitutionary relief

when appropriate. That itself is a strike against

petitioners’ reading, given that Congress “knew how

to” express an exclusionary intent in the FTC Act, see

15 U.S.C. §57b (stating that relief does not include

“exemplary damages”)—and the long history of

awarding restitution relief in injunction suits. Nor is

it claimed that the ninety-third Congress actually

made a decision to deny federal courts the power to

order wrongdoers to return ill-gotten profits in cases

where, as a matter of equity and historical practice,

such relief would be appropriate. Rather, petitioners

propose to read the absence from the relevant part of

Section 13(b) of an express reference to “restitution”

along with the presence of “permanent injunction” as

if Congress was presented with a menu of remedies

and purposefully struck out the former. In other

words, expressio unius est exclusio alterius. But such

reliance on negative implications from statutory

silence is notoriously perilous and context-dependent,

13

and in the context of Section 13(b), it fails to yield a

tenable construction.

1. First, a legislature looking for a term to

implicitly convey an intent to exclude return-of-profits

relief could hardly choose worse than “injunction”—

except perhaps “permanent injunction,” the one

Section 13(b) codifies. The ordinary, legal meaning of

“injunction” never has been confined “to solely

prospective prohibitory relief,” AFPF Br.14. Rather,

an “injunction” has long been defined as “[a] court

order [either] prohibiting someone from doing some

specified act or commanding someone to undo some

wrong or injury.” Nken v. Holder, 556 U.S. 418, 428

(2009) (quoting Black’s Law Dictionary 784 (6th ed.

1990)) (emphasis added). Justice Story reversed that

order, putting “requir[ing] a party to do a particular

thing,” first, 2 J. Story, Commentaries on Equity

Jurisprudence § 861 (9th ed. 1866), and the 2019

edition of Black’s Dictionary presents the term as an

umbrella, including an “affirmative injunction” and a

“reparative injunction.”

Worse yet for petitioners’ argument, in California

v. American Stores, 495 U.S. 271 (1990), this Court

considered—and rejected—an essentially identical

thesis. Respondent claimed that the Clayton Act’s text

and structure established that the “injunction”

authorized under Section 16 of that statute should be

construed narrowly, as forbidding a divestiture

remedy, which respondent described as impermissibly

“post hoc,” because it aimed to undo consequences of

acts committed before the case got to court; in short,

“divestiture is not an injunction.” The Court’s

rejection of that argument began with its assessment

of plain meaning: “[O]n its face, the simple grant of

14

authority in § 16 to ‘have injunctive relief’ would seem

to encompass divestiture.” 495 U.S. at 281.

2 Nor do claims about the “preventative” thrust of

the FTC Act or the forward-looking “focus” of

injunctions, support treating “injunction” in Section

13(b) as expressing an affirmative intent to exclude

historically available companions that are not “purely

prospective.”

These

claims

about

codifying

connotations are a long way from “plain meaning

interpretation.” This Court recently noted that a

federal statute enacted 200 years ago, authorizing

relief to “prevent the violation of patent-rights,” was

interpreted from the start to support disgorgement of

profits. See Liu v. SEC, 140 S. Ct. 1936, 1944 (2020)

(emphasis added). (Indeed, the quotations cited as

establishing the FTC Act’s “preventative” character,

Pet.Br.4-5, pre-date modern amendments providing

for damages and penalties.) And had Congress meant

to rule out all but “prohibitory” relief, it “knew how to”

make such a distinction explicitly. Credit Bureau Br.

26. See 15 U.S.C. 45(l) (empowering “district

courts...to grant mandatory injunctions.…”).

3. Notably, the statutory text actually disputed

here grants courts power—in proper cases and “upon

adequate proof”—to issue “permanent injunctions.”

Solely prohibitory orders likely are the norm with

respect to preliminary injunctions—which truly are

“extraordinary,” in that they rest on a provisional

determination rather than a violation finding, almost

always before the court has heard full evidence and

sometimes before the party whose conduct is

restrained has been heard at all. See Fed. R. Civ. P.

65. See also Laycock, The Death of The Irreparable

Injury Rule, 103 Harv. L. Rev. 687, 692 (1990).

15

Permanent relief under Section 13(b), in contrast,

may not issue until after the defendant has been fully

heard on the merits, after the court has found an

ongoing or imminent violation of federal law—usually

one so clear as to establish liability as a matter of law,

see p.22, infra—and then, only after deciding that a

bare “sin no more” directive would be inadequate,

contrary to priorities expressed in the statute, or

otherwise inequitable. When equity courts issue final

decrees in suits for injunction, it is much more

common to include “command[s] to undo some wrong

or injury”—ones that, instead of merely freezing

matters at the time the court rules, address

misbehavior that “could have been prevented had the

defendants

not

[initially]

outdistanced

the

government.” Schine, 334 U.S. at 129.

Significantly, the provision here empowers courts

to stop not only imminent violations but also an

ongoing unlawful “practice.” In such cases, what it

means to be “preventative” or even “prospective” is not

self-evident. In FTC v. Southwest Sunsites, Inc., 665

F.2d 611 (5th Cir. 1982), for example, which involved

a scheme to induce unsophisticated consumers to

enter into installment purchase contracts for

worthless land, the defrauded investors stood to

forfeit any right to property and the money paid in

unless they continued to make further contractual

payments. The Fifth Circuit saw nothing in Section

13(b) that limited relief for the ongoing violation to an

order prohibiting future fraudulent sales.

4. That the meanings of “injunction” and

“restitution” are in some sense distinct, because the

terms sometimes appear separately, is not the

thunderbolt that petitioners’ amici imply. That is

16

equally true of “divestiture.” See, e.g., 12 U.S.C.

§ 1467a (providing for “an injunction, decree,...order

of divestiture, or other appropriate order”). The

central question is whether such differences matter in

statutory context, i.e., whether remedies are

antagonistic or are so intertwined that one would

expect an explicit grant of one to comprehend the

other. Merely stating that a “[contempt penalty] is not

an injunction” does not answer whether that remedy

is included—or excluded—if absent from a provision

creating an injunctive cause of action. Here, the

longstanding, close, and integral connection is beyond

doubt. In Root v. Lake Shore & M.S. Ry. Co., 105 U.S.

189 (1881), the Court recognized that, in patent and

copyright cases, “the right to an account of profits is

incident to the right to an injunction.” Id at 194. A

century later, Tull v. United States, 481 U.S. 412, 424

(1987), affirmed that “a court in equity may award

monetary restitution as an adjunct to injunctive

relief.”

It is thus wrong to treat the observation that it was

“beside the point” in Nken, that a stay order “might

technically be called an injunction,” 556 U.S. at 430,

as announcing a general rule of narrow construction,

effectively reversing American Stores. Nken’s ground

for distinguishing stays from injunctions had nothing

to do with the “pure prospectivity” limitation rejected

in American Stores and renewed here, nor did Nken

retreat from the recognition in Root and Schine of the

historic

connections

between

disgorgement,

divestiture, and prohibitions as constituent parts of

effective decrees. Nken gave the term “injunction” a

narrower reading under a provision forbidding

injunctions—thereby preserving courts’ historic

power to issue stays. American Stores gave the term

17

an encompassing interpretation—refused to give it

exclusionary effect—when, as here, it appeared in a

grant of remedial authority.

That same contextual focus explains why the

admonition against “lawyerly inventiveness,” in

Great-West Life v. Knudson, 534 U.S.204, 211 n.1,

(2002), is inapposite here. That warning concerned

the potential to dress in equitable garb “claim[s] for

legal relief”—like the money due on a contract sought

there, under a statute, ERISA, that uses “equitable”

as a term of limitation on the private remedies

afforded—in order to exclude individual remedies,

such as damages, that can disadvantage other

beneficiaries of what is essentially a common fund. As

the Court highlighted in Liu, labeling differences

among closely related or substantively identical forms

of equitable relief are seldom statutorily significant

and, as a practical matter, inescapable. See 140 S. Ct.

at 1943.3

5. With varying degrees of candor, petitioners and

amici appear to accept that their implication-based

theory is insufficient under Porter, and instead

disparage the Court’s precedent as outmoded or

somehow insufficiently respectful of Congress. Not so.

3 Meghrig v. KFC Western, Inc., 516 U.S. 479 (1996), which

refused to read a narrow private action provision in RCRA as

authorizing the plaintiff to recover costs previously paid a third

party for a prior clean-up is no more pertinent. The Court did not

hold the relief unavailable because it was monetary; but because,

inter alia, it was unrelated to “the subject matter of [that

unusual] suit for injunctive relief,” Porter, 328 U.S. at 399,

“imminent” health and environmental dangers from hazardous

waste. And unlike under Section 13(b), the ostensible

“restitution” sought did not involve returning money defendant

had obtained from the plaintiff.

18

Like many other canons and clear statement

principles, the Porter rule leaves Congress in the

driver’s seat. Just as Congress remains free to enact a

law with extraterritorial or retroactive effect or one

that alters the federal-state balance, Porter poses no

bar to legislation that withholds particular equitable

powers or draws lines between ones that traditionally

have operated in tandem, requiring only that

Congress make clear its intent to depart from

longstanding practice. Such rules are “traditional

tools of statutory construction.” See Landgraf v. USI

Film Prods, 511 U.S. 244, 261 (1994) (refusing to treat

negative implication as sufficient to overcome

nonretroactivity presumption). Indeed, the Porter rule

itself advances separation of powers values, by

ensuring that Congress acts deliberately when

altering or narrowing the Judiciary’s traditional

powers to adjudicate cases unquestionably within

courts’ jurisdiction.4

4 Despite the imprecise terminology, the concerns about

“implied remedies” that petitioners invoke, appear in decisions

addressing (1) private suits for (2) damages for violations of

federal statutes that (3) contain no cause of action. Those

features are all absent here. Creation of causes of action is not a

traditional judicial power; and it risks not only misjudging

congressional intent, but overriding explicit objections of the

Branch invested with the “power to ‘take Care that the Laws be

faithfully executed,’” Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better Env’t., 523

U.S. 83, 129 (1998) (Stevens, J., concurring in judgment). And

the potential that private damages will disrupt an integrated,

carefully constructed statutory scheme, is far greater than with

equitable restitution. The claims here involve the exercise of

equitable discretion to remedy proven violations found in

congressionally authorized enforcement actions, initiated by the

legislatively chosen exclusive enforcement authority.

19

In fact, interpretive rules grounded in historic

practice have much less Congress-disempowering

potential than the ostensibly self-executing one

petitioners embrace. Porter requires only that

Congress say so when it intends to accomplish a

particular, highly anomalous result. Expressio

unius—by treating greater explicitness or specificity

in different provisions and later-enacted laws as a

basis for concluding that a power did not previously

exist or that an earlier omission was purposeful—can

alter statutory meaning after-the-fact, in ways

enactors did not contemplate.

6. There is a more fundamental problem with the

idea that petitioners’ construction of Section 13(b)

should be accepted because it rests on an especially

formidable canon of construction. An argument is

“rule-based” if it applies a principle consistently

whenever similar questions arise. Petitioners’ theory

is not that. While marching under the banner of

treating statutory omissions as purposeful,

petitioners do not accept the answers that approach

yields to comparable interpretive questions Section

13(b)’s text raises. And for good reason: Consistent

adherence to petitioners’ ostensible rule cannot

produce a plausible or coherent interpretation.

To begin, Section 13(b) expressly authorizes

preliminary injunctions of challenged practices but

provides that such orders terminate unless an

administrative complaint is promptly filed—in which

case the provisional order stays in place until a ceaseand-desist order becomes final. That should mean—

on petitioners’ account—that this “form of relief,” Pet.

Br.14, is unavailable in cases where the FTC seeks a

permanent

injunction,

never

initiating

an

20

administrative proceeding. But that would mean that

a district court is without power to stop a defendant

from continuing injurious—often patently unlawful—

activity until final judgment. And if that textual

answer is accepted, and the only congressionally

sanctioned way to obtain effectual provisional relief is

to file and pursue an administrative complaint, the

permanent injunction remedy would be literally

superfluous: The preliminary injunction would

prevent misbehavior until a cease-and-desist order—

which, like a permanent (prohibitory) injunction, is

judicially enforceable—took effect. And that regime, of

course, would nullify what petitioners present as the

reason Congress provided for permanent injunctions

under Section 13(b): to afford a remedy for cases

where the Section 5 administrative process provides

no benefit.

Likewise, even-handed application of expressio

unius could, by extinguishing district courts’ longrecognized authority to order asset freezes, frustrate

what petitioners posit is the overall statutory design.

They do not deny that Congress affirmatively

intended for the FTC to obtain consumer redress for

certain Section 5 violations, but argue that district

courts may order it only through the process provided

under Section 19(a). That contention is mistaken on

its own terms. See infra. But acknowledging there are

cases where monetary relief is proper requires further

recognizing the need for some effectual way to stop a

malefactor from dissipating the proceeds of unlawful

behavior between the time he learns the FTC is on his

trail and when a Section 19 decree issues. Section

13(b)’s preliminary injunction provision, however, is

silent about that sort of relief. It speaks (only) of

restraining the “practice,” 15 U.S.C. § 53(b)(2), found

21

likely to violate Section 5. This is no synthetic concern:

Numerous amici rail against courts’ exercise of this

power, and maintain that extinguishing the power to

“restrain[] assets for future monetary awards,”

Chamber Br.4, is the consequence of endorsing

petitioners’ position. See AFPF Br.7 (“Nor does

[Section 13(b)] mention ‘asset freezes.’”). Petitioners

are understandably cagey about embracing a regime

that would simultaneously render the Section 13(b)

remedy superfluous and make their proffered

substitute ineffectual against fly-by-night fraudsters.

But they offer no basis for treating one particular

“omission” as fatal, but these other, equally

conspicuous ones, as leaving equitable powers

unaffected.

B. Section 19 does not—and could not—supply a basis

for interpreting Section 13(b) to withhold judicial

power to award restorative relief.

The second leg of petitioners’ argument is that

Section 19 requires withholding equitable monetary

relief from Section 13(b) courts. That claim is an odd

one out of the gate: Section 19 was enacted later, by a

different Congress, and it provides, in plain words,

that “[n]othing in this section shall be construed to

affect any authority of the Commission under any

other provision of law.” Arguments about the meaning

of Section 13(b) that depend on inferences from

Section 19 seem at odds with that directive. But to the

extent they are permissible, petitioners’ various

Section 19 arguments depend on important

misunderstandings of the provision’s text.

1. It is simply wrong that there would be “[n]o need

for” Section 19, Pet. Br.16, if Section 13(b) allows

restitutionary relief. Whatever Section 13(b)’s

22

meaning, the FTC had no power, until Congress

enacted Section 19, to obtain consumer redress in

enforcement actions brought under its Section 5(b)

administrative adjudication authority. Indeed,

Section 19 was enacted in the aftermath of Heater v.

FTC 503 F.2d 321 (9th Cir. 1974), a prominent

decision that rejected the Commission’s contention

that it could order restitution under its own remedial

powers. And under the long-prevailing interpretation

of Section 13(b), Section 19 still relieves the

Commission of the need to choose between elaborating

on the meaning of “unfair and deceptive practices”

and divesting wrongdoers of ill-gotten gains.

2. Petitioners propose a very different role for

Section 19, as announcing Congress’s judgment,

rooted in fair notice and commercial certainty

concerns, that restitution is impermissible absent

certain “protections” and that return-of-profits relief

under Section 13(b) is forbidden, because it fails to

provide these. This theory, however, depends on

serious misunderstandings of how Section 19(a)—and

Section 13(b)—operate.

First, what the Ninth Circuit concurrence

identified as Section 19(a)’s first “procedural

protection[]”—the “multi-step process,” whereby a

Section 19 redress case “travels through an

administrative hearing and appeal and then []judicial

review and then a lawsuit,” AFPF Br.5-6, gets things

upside-down. The protection in that process comes at

the last stage, a proceeding before an Article III judge,

where the FTC is a litigant and must persuade the

court that relief is warranted. The earlier stages,

where the FTC has special powers, are the thing

protected against. Indeed, one basis for the Heater

23

decision was that the FTC—unlike a federal court—is

not presumed to have full equitable powers, because

its processes would “become suspect” as stakes rose,

since the Commission acts “as both prosecutor and

judge in its own [administrative] proceeding[s],” 503

F.2d at 325. See Liu, 140 S. Ct. at 1946-47. (“It makes

sense that Congress would expressly name the

equitable powers it grants to an agency for use in

administrative proceedings.”). Congress’s response to

Heater, Section 19, did not codify a preference for

administrative procedures over judicial ones—rather

the opposite: It affirmed the importance of consumer

redress against violators of Section 5, but also

imposed the judicial check Heater suggested.

Section 13(b) permanent-injunction proceedings

provide defendants significantly greater protection.

Facts are found and the statute is interpreted by a

court, not an agency, and decisions about relief are

informed by those judicial findings. See FTC v.

Wyndham Worldwide Corp., 799 F.3d 236 (3rd Cir.

2015). When courts encounter “ambiguity in statutes,”

they “generally adopt the best or most reasonable

interpretation,” but agencies may “adopt any

reasonable construction,” including ones “impos[ing]

higher legal obligations than required by the best

interpretation.” Id. at 252. Moreover, Section 19(c)(1)

directs that courts give “conclusive effect” to FTC

findings in cease-and-desist proceedings. Thus, when

Credit Bureau inveighs against “subjecting

businesses to one-off monetary judgments based on

the agency’s perception of what qualifies as ‘unfair or

deceptive,” Br.2-3, it is describing the mode of

proceeding it insists Congress preferred, not Section

13(b).

24

Contrary to amici’s arguments, “the Act’s two-part

structure” does not “ensure[] that American

businesses are given sufficient notice of whether their

conduct violates the Act.” NCLA Br.18. It is literally

accurate that, under Section 19, the FTC “must obtain

a final cease-and-desist order before it can collect a

monetary judgment.” Credit Bureau Br.11. Indeed,

collecting restitution requires a final court order—as

it does in Section 13(b) cases. But Section 19 relief is

not, as this implies, confined to harms committed after

a cease-and-desist order became final. Section 19(d)’s

text is unambiguous that redress may be ordered for

money obtained long before the Commission found a

Section 5 violation, indeed years before it files an

administrative complaint. 15 U.S.C. § 57b(d).

None of this is to deny that the Commission often

prefers to pursue relief under Section 13(b)—or that,

in practice, the cumbersome, multi-stage process does

not have appeal for some defendants. There are many

circumstances where the Commission has no interest

particularizing the meaning of “unfair and deceptive

practices,” but relief is imperative. No protracted

administrative proceeding is necessary to inform

regulated parties that it is unlawfully deceptive to

market undevelopable wasteland using pictures of

beachfront lots and swaying palm trees or to certify

that inexpensive coins or gems are investment-grade.

See FTC v. Sec. Rare Coin & Bullion Corp., 931 F.2d

1312, 1314-1315 (8th Cir. 1991); FTC v. Gem Merch.

Corp., 87 F.3d 466 (11th Cir. 1996). And obtaining

effective preliminary relief and relatively prompt

disposition loom large when there is concern a

defendant will fly-by-night or otherwise place victims’

money beyond courts’ remedial reach. (Such parties

have a corresponding interest in postponing remedial

25

proceedings, but that is not a “protection” Congress

meant to confer.)5

The second alleged “procedural protection” is

Section 19(d)’s statute of limitations. But as just

noted, that provision does not limit a court to

awarding three years of redress. Rather, it authorizes

the FTC to pursue—and courts to order—redress for

harms suffered three years before an administrative

action “commenced,” up through a final cease-anddesist order. That period is unpredictable and

lengthy. The cease-and-desist order in Carter

Products, Inc. v. FTC, 268 F.2d 461, 474 (9th Cir.

1959), took 16 years between complaint and finality,

and despite recent FTC initiatives to impose some

administrative deadlines, a process that travels

through multiple levels of the federal court system is

rarely speedy. Section 13(b) proceedings move more

quickly; defendants will know within months of

filing—sometimes

much

sooner—whether

a

restituionary remedy is seriously on the table. And

while no rule limits Section 13(b) relief to a fixed

number of years, were a case to arise under Section

13(b) where restitution would exceed the maximum

permitted under Section 19, the limitations statute

would “not apply” of its own force, but the court could

consider it in fashioning a decree. Kansas v. Nebraska,

574 U.S. 445, 464-65 (2015) (“[b]alancing of equities

5 The brief

of SBH amici supplies a poignant illustration.

Although TINA.org takes no position on the merits of the

underlying allegations, when a business is sued as an unlawful

pyramid scheme, claims by current “victims” to speak for

consumer interests warrant careful scrutiny. Those individuals

almost certainly stand to fare better if the business is given

longer to grow than if it is shut down while they remain near the

“bottom.”

26

and hardships may lead the court to grant some

equitable relief but not the full measure requested”)

(quoting D. Dobbs, Law of Remedies § 2.4(1), p. 92 (2d

ed. 1993)).

That leaves what petitioners call Section 19(a)(2)’s

“substantive limitation”—which limits disgorgement

and damages awards to cases where a court finds that

a “reasonable man” would know defendants’ practices

to be “dishonest or fraudulent.” Petitioners are not

wrong that that is a limitation; it is not impossible to

imagine a situation where a cease-and-desist order

would be upheld, but disgorgement relief would be

denied. Cf. Hecht Co. v. Bowles, 321 U.S. 321, 325

(1944) (sustaining district court’s denial of injunction,

when there was “no doubt…of [defendant’s] good faith

and diligence”); 15 U.S.C. § 45(m)(1)(C) (penalty

determination “shall take into account the degree of

culpability… and such other matters as justice may

require”).

But it overstates matters to depict this as a mens

rea or “knowledge” requirement. See Pet.Br.28. The

statutory text makes clear that a defendant who

harbors no fraudulent intent and indeed believes

sincerely that his conduct is lawful under Section 5

may still be liable in damages under Section 19(a).

(There surely are sellers of “ionized” bracelets and

Okinawan coral who actually believe they have found

a disease-curing breakthrough.) And even as an

abstract matter, any gap between practices a

“reasonable” person would know are “dishonest” and

ones which a district court finds “deceptive” is slender.

In practice, there is likely no gap at all. Section

13(b) proceedings are governed by equitable

principles, including that “a defendant’s mental state

27

is relevant to assigning an appropriate remedy.”

Romag Fasteners, Inc v. Fossil, Inc., 140 S. Ct. 1492,

1496-97 (2020). As in that case, a defendant’s culpable

intent can be an “important consideration in

determining whether an award of profits is

appropriate,” though “it is not inflexible precondition

to recovery.” Id.

That is what four decades of decisions under

Section 13(b) indicate. Although petitioners’ and

amici’s briefs abound in references to businesses who

have large sums “extracted” by the FTC for practices

that are “common accepted industry practices,”

Chamber Br.3, or for violations based on boundarypushing interpretations of Section 5, the actual

decided cases—the ones petitioners placed on the

“wrong” side of the circuit conflict they asked the

Court to resolve—tell a different story. They depict a

rogues’ gallery of defendants whose practices every

“reasonable [person]” would recognize as “dishonest.”

The “substantive and procedural limitations” of

Section 19(a) would not have helped the defendant in

FTC v. Direct Mktg. Concepts, Inc., 624 F.3d 1 (1st Cir.

2010), whose infomercials said “direct quotes from the

New England Journal of Medicine” supported its

claim that “cancer is acidosis” and would be reversed

by ingesting coral pills, id. at 6, or the one in FTC v.

Amy Travel Serv., Inc., 875 F.2d 564 (7th Cir. 1989),

the circuit precedent Credit Bureau overruled—whose

business involved peddling “vacation certificates,”

knowing that purchasers would pay far less booking

trips without them.

Indeed, the case before the Court is no exception.

Petitioners’ brief strains to portray their culpability as

marginal—insisting that liability was based on a bare

28

misleading “net impression.” But neither the district

court nor, presumably, the jurors who convicted

AMG’s principal on 14 criminal counts at a 5-week

trial, United States v. Grote, 961 F.3d 105 (2d Cir.

2020), were persuaded that it was an honest mistake

that petitioners placed highly misleading “loan terms”

in the prominent “TILA [disclosure] box,” but

“disclosed” the reality—that borrowers who clicked

“yes” were agreeing to pay an additional $675, not

$90, to borrow $300—in small font and footnotes

scattered on multiple pages of their website. See 961

F.3d at 107 (finding “overwhelming evidence that

[petitioner was] aware of the unlawful nature of the

activities”).6 Nor is there merit to the implication that

finding deception based on a “net impression” reflects

some faddish agency innovation. The Commission’s

second published decision, in 1916, involved thread

marketed as “Kopock Silks” with the words “‘is not a

worm silk,’ printed in minute, inconspicuous letters.”

FTC v. Abbot & Co., 1 F.T.C. 16, 17. Any other rule

would give carte blanche for fraud: Sugar pills could

be marketed as cures for serious diseases by flashing

a disclaimer in the waning moments of an infomercial

that “the people in white coats were actors, not

doctors.” Cf. Direct Marketing, 621 F.3d at 12.

6 Petitioners’ amici’s solicitude for Section 5 defendants goes

beyond AMG. PhRMA describes the settlement with Volkswagen

as involving “allegedly misleading claims about ‘clean diesel,’”

Br.10 n.14 (emphasis added)—years after that corporation

pleaded

guilty

to

felony

charges.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/volkswagen-ag-agrees-pleadguilty-and-pay-43-billion-criminal-and-civil-penalties-six.

29

III. Disabling Section 13(b) enforcement would result

in real and far-reaching consumer and market

harm.

The adverse consequences of accepting the

prohibitory-relief-only theory and bringing the FTC’s

Section 13(b) program to a halt would be real. To be

sure, an FTC-disabling reading of Section 13(b) would

leave in place state laws, many of which provide,

unambiguously, for restitutionary remedies and other

forms of relief that go further than does the FTC Act.

But it does not follow that state law can do the

consumer protection work the FTC program does—let

alone that state law alone can accomplish what is

currently done by both, increasingly collaboratively.

Remedies that are “robust” on paper, Credit

Bureau Br.42, do not automatically translate into

effective enforcement. As noted above, the basic

problems that supplied the impetus for sweeping

changes in consumer law in the 1960s and 1970s—

that individual victims of deceptive marketing

practices lack the knowledge, resources, and

incentives to litigate—are stubbornly persistent. A

lawsuit remains an unattractive option for a

consumer who has suffered $4 in losses, even if state

law might award him $8 and attorney’s fees if he

prevailed. Likewise, class settlements where

defendants commit to creating a “$100 million fund”

in exchange for a blanket release look much less

impressive if the claims process is designed to

minimize actual payouts. Enhancements designed to

overcome these problems that seem sensible on their

own terms can perform worse under real world

conditions, where they overlap with other regimes and

30

generate complex disputes about jurisdiction, choice

of law, and class certification.

Public enforcement under state law regimes avoids

many of these pitfalls, but not all. Even before the

unprecedented public health crisis, state budgets

were strained, and a vast array of different

substantive responsibilities competed for the

attention of the generalists who play a lead role in

consumer protection efforts. And public enforcement

does not solve the challenges of addressing

misconduct that is multi-state, nationwide, or

international in scope. Enforcement at the state level,

particularly

effectual

enforcement,

generates

difficult—and litigable—questions about legislative

and judicial jurisdiction, state court remedial powers,

and the preclusive effects of other proceedings—not to

mention protests that state regulation unduly

burdens interstate commerce or poses an obstacle to

federal statutory objectives.

The FTC is not similarly challenged. It has

nationwide jurisdiction and an unparalleled view of

the landscape. It maintains data on millions of

consumer complaints and has unique statutory

authority to operate across national borders. While

resources for the FTC’s consumer protection mission

are finite, they are ample enough to do the

investigations and factual development necessary to

hold sophisticated corporate wrongdoers accountable

for large illegalities. The Commission’s mission and

career staff have much more subject-matter focus

than officials with primary responsibility for enforcing

similar laws at the state level.

Finally, and directly contrary to petitioners’ rogueenforcer caricatures, the Commission’s work is subject

31

to substantial checks and thoughtful monitoring,

including through congressional oversight, Inspector

General reports, and statutorily mandated reporting

obligations, and active public fora. Hundreds of pages

of briefing cannot obscure the glaring reality that a

rule giving the worst wrongdoers an absolute right to

retain funds they took from unwitting victims will

make consumers and the economy more vulnerable to

harm. But it is equally true, if less obviously so, that

efforts to drive the FTC off the enforcement field will

only disserve the interests in fair, rational, and

coherent consumer protection regulation that

petitioners and amici ostensibly champion.

Conclusion

The decision of the court of appeals should be

affirmed.

Respectfully submitted,

DAVID T. GOLDBERG

Counsel of Record

DONAHUE, GOLDBERG, WEAVER

& LITTLETON

1008 Pennsylvania Avenue, SE

Washington, DC 20003

(212) 334-8813

david@donahuegoldberg.com

BONNIE L. PATTEN

LAURA D. SMITH

TRUTH IN ADVERTISING, INC.

115 Samson Rock Drive, Suite 2

Madison, Connecticut 06443

Counsel for Amicus Curiae

32