California Attorney General Rob Bonta yesterday released a largely unredacted version of the state's preliminary injunction filing against Amazon, making public for the first time the specific emails, vendor names, and exact price figures at the centre of an alleged price-fixing scheme that California argues has driven up costs for consumers across the country.

The release, announced on 20 April 2026, follows Bonta's original filing of the preliminary injunction request in February 2026. At the time, most of the evidence was sealed. The newly public version of the filing identifies by name the retailers and vendors involved in what California's Department of Justice describes as coordinated agreements to raise prices on competing platforms. The case itself, filed in San Francisco Superior Court under case number CGC-22-601826, has been active since September 2022. A hearing on the preliminary injunction is scheduled for 23 July 2026. The trial is set to begin on 19 January 2027.

What the filing alleges

According to the California Department of Justice, Amazon operated three distinct methods of what it characterises as illegal price fixing. The first, which the filing calls "Breaking the Price Match," involves Amazon and a competing retailer, through a shared vendor, agreeing to end a price-matching situation by temporarily raising prices or pulling a product from the market. The second method, "Increasing the Competitor Retail Price," has Amazon contacting vendors and directing them to persuade competing retailers to raise their own prices. The third, "Removing the Product," sees vendors withdraw products from rival platforms entirely so that the lower price disappears from the market and Amazon can then raise its own price for the same item.

The filing argues that each of these methods constitutes price fixing as defined under California's Cartwright Act. Under that statute, any combination that "tampers with price structures" is illegal per se, meaning the conduct is unlawful on its face without the need to assess market effects.

The Levi's and Walmart example

One of the clearest illustrations in the newly unredacted filing involves Levi's khaki trousers and Walmart. According to the filing, Amazon sent Levi's links to two products being sold at lower prices on Walmart.com - ranging from $25.47 to $26.99 - and expressed hope that the pricing could be "resolved over the next few days." The following day, Levi's reported back that it had spoken with Walmart, and that Walmart had agreed to "take Easy Khaki Classic fit back up to ladder SPP price, $29.99 immediately." Levi's then provided links showing the updated Walmart price. Amazon responded confirming that "the updated pricing of $29.99 is now showing up on [Amazon]." Both platforms had moved from a range of $25.47 to $26.99 up to $29.99 - a price increase of between $2.00 and $4.52 per item.

Canine Naturals and Chewy

The Canine Naturals pet treat episode, involving vendor GlobalOne and retailer Chewy, adds further granularity to how these arrangements worked in practice. According to the filing, the plan was set out in email correspondence from GlobalOne. For its part, Amazon would raise the list prices for the Canine Naturals range in order to pressure Chewy to follow. GlobalOne would then contact Chewy directly and notify them of the Amazon price increase, asking that Chewy do the same. Amazon insisted on prices even higher than GlobalOne had initially proposed. On 5 January, Amazon updated thirteen Canine Naturals products to agreed-upon prices and submitted a ticket to override the price match to Chewy for twenty-four hours, noting in an email that "Chewy should be aware of this update and follow suit accordingly." By 7 January, GlobalOne confirmed that "the ones that went up on Amazon immediately went up on Chewy." The result, according to the filing, was increased prices across more than ten Canine Naturals pet treat products on both platforms.

All the Rages, Armen Living, and the mechanics of compliance

The filing also names All the Rages, a home decor vendor, and furniture supplier Armen Living. In the All the Rages case, Amazon flagged 84 specific products where a lower-priced competitor was triggering a price match that Amazon deemed unprofitable. Amazon threatened to stop ordering products from All the Rages if it did not act. The vendor subsequently "zeroed out inventory and contacted the retailers to fix the retail," and reported prices had increased at HomeDepot.com - for instance, one item moved to $29.99. Amazon thanked the vendor for its "quick action" but noted that 11 of the 84 products remained at problematic prices. A chart included in the filing showed exact target prices: a table lamp at Walmart had moved from $45.83 to $59.99, and another from $24.99 to $39.00.

With Armen Living, Amazon flagged four furniture products where competitor pricing was "drastically lower." Armen Living promised to put potential offenders "on pause" and, in an internal email included in the filing, stated: "If the problematic retail does not fix by the end of the week, we will discontinue [these products] from your problematic competition to ensure that Amazon can return to a healthy state with these items." Amazon warned it would remove all four products from its platform immediately before Black Friday and Cyber Monday if the issue was not resolved. Armen Living subsequently confirmed it had removed items from competing retailers' sites. The filing includes a specific chart from Amazon showing the exact prices it expected: a barstool needed to go from $156.58 to $172.97, and a dining chair from $103.56 to $119.99.

The scale of the conduct

The filing describes the examples above not as isolated incidents but as representative of "countless interactions - spanning years and many different employees and product lines." As Amazon told one vendor explicitly, according to the filing: "I am very determined to help you hunt the disrupters in the market."

Other named interactions include: Amazon directing lawn and garden manufacturer Scotts to contact a competing retailer and have it raise prices, "even if it is just for the 3 days leading up to [Prime Day]"; Amazon sending apparel vendor Hanes links to Target.com and Walmart.com showing lower prices, after which Hanes confirmed it "reached out to Target and Walmart to have the prices increased"; Amazon contacting baby apparel vendor Babyvision about a markdown at Walmart, which the vendor resolved by removing the product from Walmart "to fix the pricing problem"; Amazon emailing Allergan about suppressed eye drops due to a price match at $13.59, which resolved when Allergan reported Walmart had moved back to $16.99 and Amazon confirmed "Buy box back up at $16.99"; vendor Agrothrive reporting after a meeting with a Home Depot manager that "she has agreed to raise the prices this time"; vendor Songmic explaining it had "urgently asked" Wayfair "to stop running deals" on a product; and Westinghouse explaining it was "making efforts to push the market back to a retail that will give you [Amazon] solid headroom."

How Amazon enforces compliance

The filing describes two formal mechanisms Amazon used to penalise vendors when lower prices appeared on competitor platforms. The first is the Guaranteed Minimum Margin Agreement, or GMM, which requires vendors to compensate Amazon financially for any drop in profitability resulting from a price match. The second is the Matching Compensation Program, or MCP, which operates in a similar way but applies retroactively. According to the filing, MCP "opportunities" arise when Amazon experiences "margin degradation driven by a competitor price match."

Beyond monetary penalties, Amazon also threatened vendors with temporary product suppression - internally called "BOSSing" - as well as with longer-term removal through what the company called its "Can't Realize a Profit" or CRaP mechanism, which shuts off purchase orders and effectively removes a product from the platform. Amazon also threatened to block access to promotional programmes including Prime Day and to strip vendors of advertising visibility.

According to the filing, Amazon's bargaining leverage was substantial. The company reported revenue of over $387 billion and operating income of $24.9 billion in North America alone in 2024. There are over 100 million Prime members in the United States. Amazon Prime membership is present in approximately 70% of all US households. For many vendors, Amazon accounted for a significant share of total sales - nearly 30% for one vendor named in the filing, Babyvision - making it practically impossible to refuse Amazon's demands.

Amazon trained employees to avoid written records

A distinct section of the filing addresses Amazon's internal communications practices. According to the filing, Amazon trained its employees to avoid putting certain pricing discussions in writing. One internal training document instructed employees not to use email when they "need to refer to specific example, when negotiating incremental price match funding, or to highlight activities in the channel." An email to Amazon staff cautioned that even when "legally approved talking points" existed for pricing discussions with vendors, it was "often better to have these conversations over the phone." A vendor manager at Amazon told a vendor that improving Amazon's profitability was "a delicate conversation for numerous reasons and probably best suited for a phone call/virtual meeting."

The California filing argues that this pattern of conduct means the full extent of Amazon's alleged price fixing is likely even broader than what the documentary record already shows.

California is pursuing the case under the Cartwright Act, which is the state's primary competition statute. The Act explicitly prohibits combinations or agreements that "increase the price of merchandise or of any commodity," fix prices "at any standard or figure," bind parties "not to sell any article below a common standard figure," and establish or settle prices "so as to preclude a free and unrestricted competition." Under Cartwright Act precedent, price fixing is illegal per se, meaning a court does not need to examine market effects to find a violation.

California argues the alleged conduct violates at least five separate provisions of the Act. Under the California legal standard for preliminary injunctions, once the government establishes a reasonable probability of prevailing, a rebuttable presumption arises that potential harm to the public outweighs potential harm to the defendant. California argues Amazon cannot rebut that presumption because it cannot demonstrate grave or irreparable harm from being prohibited from conduct that is allegedly already illegal.

Background: a case that started in 2022

California originally filed its lawsuit against Amazon on 14 September 2022. That initial complaint focused on Amazon's price parity agreements, under which merchants were required to avoid offering lower prices on other platforms. According to the original complaint, Amazon had more than 160 million Prime members nationwide and approximately 25 million customers in California. The suit alleged that these agreements thwarted the ability of other online retailers to compete, contributing to Amazon's dominance and harming consumers through inflated fees and higher prices.

The preliminary injunction motion, filed on 23 February 2026 - and now substantially unredacted - escalated the allegations considerably, introducing new evidence gathered through discovery that, California alleges, shows not just a policy of punishing lower prices elsewhere, but an active, recurring practice of contacting vendors and competing retailers to coordinate price increases.

The regulatory pressure on Amazon's pricing practices has not been limited to California. Germany's Bundeskartellamt banned Amazon in February 2026 from controlling third-party seller prices on its marketplace, ordering a disgorgement of approximately €58.8 million - the first application of enforcement provisions introduced under Germany's 11th amendment to the Competition Act. Separately, the Bundeskartellamt had issued a preliminary assessment in June 2025finding that Amazon's algorithmic price caps for marketplace sellers likely violated German competition law. In the United Kingdom, a competition tribunal approved two class action lawsuits against Amazon in July 2025, one representing approximately 52 million consumers and a second representing more than 200,000 sellers.

Why this matters for the marketing and retail industry

The California case has implications that extend beyond legal procedure. The conduct described in the filing involves the day-to-day mechanics of retail pricing on the largest e-commerce platform in the United States. Vendors, brand managers, and retail media buyers operating within the Amazon ecosystem are confronted with the practical reality that price decisions on one platform can cascade across others - not through market forces, but through direct coordination.

The filing's description of the CRaP mechanism - a system that terminates purchase orders for products Amazon deems unprofitable - illustrates how tightly Amazon's advertising, retail, and pricing systems are intertwined. A product that falls off the purchase order system loses not only organic sales but also its advertising eligibility on the platform. For brands that depend on Amazon for a meaningful share of revenue, that threat shapes pricing strategy across every channel they sell on.

The case also highlights the structural position Amazon occupies. According to the February 2026 press release, 92% of consumers say they are more likely to buy products from Amazon than other e-commerce sites, and 75% of consumers check prices and product reviews on Amazon before making a purchase. That positioning gives Amazon's pricing demands a weight that vendors find difficult to resist, as the filing documents in granular detail.

Timeline

Summary

Who: California Attorney General Rob Bonta, Amazon.com Inc., and numerous named vendors and retailers including Levi's, Walmart, Chewy, GlobalOne, All the Rages, Armen Living, Hanes, Target, Allergan, Agrothrive, Songmic, Wayfair, Westinghouse, Scotts, Babyvision, Chefman, and others.

What: Bonta today released a largely unredacted version of California's motion for preliminary injunction against Amazon, publicly revealing emails and specific pricing data that California alleges show Amazon coordinating retail price increases with vendors and competing retailers. California argues the conduct constitutes price fixing that is illegal per se under the Cartwright Act.

When: The release occurred on 20 April 2026. The underlying lawsuit was filed on 14 September 2022. The preliminary injunction motion was submitted on 23 February 2026. The injunction hearing is set for 23 July 2026. Trial is scheduled for 19 January 2027.

Where: The case is proceeding in the San Francisco Superior Court, County of San Francisco. The alleged conduct involved Amazon's first-party retail operations in the United States, with vendors and competing retailers spanning multiple product categories and platforms including Walmart.com, Target.com, Chewy.com, HomeDepot.com, Wayfair, Best Buy, and others.

Why: California argues Amazon used its dominant market position - with over 100 million US Prime members and a presence in approximately 70% of US households - to coerce vendors into acting as intermediaries to raise prices at competing retailers. The goal, according to the filing, was to protect Amazon's profit margins by ensuring consumers could not find cheaper prices elsewhere. The evidence release is intended to inform the public ahead of the 23 July preliminary injunction hearing.

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