Public Interest Groups Urge Passage of Six Antitrust Bills Targeting Big Tech

WASHINGTON, September 2, 2021 – Nearly 60 public interest groups signed a letter Thursday urging the House party leaders to push for a vote on six antirust bills that cleared the House judiciary committee in June.

The goal of the six bills is to rein in the power of Big Tech through new antirust liability provisions, including new merger and acquisition review, measures to prevent anticompetitive activity, and providing government enforcers more power to break-up or separate big businesses. They include American Choice and Innovation Online Act, H.R. 3816, Platform Competition and Opportunity Act, H.R. 3826, Ending Platform Monopolies Act, H.R. 3825, Augmenting Compatibility and Competition by Enabling Service Switching (ACCESS) Act, H.R. 3849, Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act, H.R. 3843, and State Antitrust Enforcement Venue Act, H.R. 3460.

The letter, which was directed at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-California, were promoting a package of six bills that were the result of a two-year bipartisan investigation that included 10 hearings, featuring the testimony of the CEOs of the major tech companies, 240 interviews, 1.3 million documents and a 450-page report, the letter notes.

“We believe that these bills will bring urgently needed change and accountability to these companies and an industry that most Americans agree is already doing great harm to our democracy,” the letter said. Public Citizen was the first of the 58 groups on the letter.

America has a monopoly problem. Monopoly power lowers wages, reduces innovation and entrepreneurship, exacerbates income and regional inequality, undermines the free press and access to information, and perpetuates toxic systems of racial, gender, and class dominance,” the letter alleged.

“Big Tech monopolies are at the center of many of these problems,” it continued. “Reining in these companies is an essential first step to reverse the damage of concentrated corporate power throughout our economy. The bills that passed out of the House Judiciary Committee, with bipartisan support, do just that and it is imperative that they move forward in the House.”

List of signatories:

• Public Citizen
• Accountable Tech
• Action Center on Race & the Economy
• ALIGN: The Alliance for a Greater New York
• Alliance for Pharmacy Compounding
• American Booksellers Association
• American Family Voices
• American Independent Business Alliance
• American Specialty Toy Retailing Association
• Artist Rights Alliance
• Athena
• Cambridge Local First
• Center for American Progress
• Center for Digital Democracy
• Center for Popular Democracy
• Committee to Support the Antitrust Laws
• Decode Democracy
• Demos
• Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Friends of the Earth
• Future of Music Coalition
• Gig Workers Rising
• Global Exchange
• Indivisible Georgia Coalition
• Indivisible Hawaii
• Indivisible Ulster/NY19
• Institute for Local Self-Reliance
• International Brotherhood of Teamsters
• Jobs With Justice
• Kairos Action
• Local First Arizona
• Louisville Independent Business Alliance
• Main Street Alliance
• Mainers for Accountable Leadership
• Media Alliance
• Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO
• National Employment Law Project
• New York Communities For Change
• New York Communities for Change
• North American Hardware and Paint Association
• Open Markets Institute
• Our Revolution
• PowerSwitch Action
• Public Knowledge
• Running Industry Association
• Secure Elections Network
• Service Employees International Union
• Shop Local Raleigh/Greater Raleigh Merchants Association
• SIMBA (Spokane Independent Metro Business Alliance)
• Small Business Rising
• Stand Up Nashville
• StayLocal, an initiative of Urban Conservancy
• Strategic Organizing Center
• SumOfUs
• The Democratic Coalition
• UltraViolet
• Venice Resistance
• Warehouse workers for justice