(Reuters) – A California judge has rejected Amazon.com Inc’s bid to dismiss the state’s antitrust lawsuit accusing the online retailer of illegally forcing merchants to accept policies that result in artificially high prices for consumers.
California sufficiently alleged that Amazon’s policies “have had the anticompetitive effect of raising prices on competing retail marketplaces as well as on third-party sellers’ own websites,” Judge Ethan Schulman in San Francisco Superior Court wrote.
Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.
In a statement, California Attorney General Rob Bonta said: “There is no shortage of evidence showing that the ‘Everything store’ is costing consumers more for just about everything.”
Bonta had sued Amazon last September, objecting to rules that prevent merchants from selling products at lower prices with other online retailers or on their own websites.
Washington, D.C. is appealing a judge’s March 2022 dismissal of a similar lawsuit there.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Aurora Ellis)
