California’s antitrust case against Amazon just hit a major turning point. Hundreds of previously redacted documents now reveal how the e-commerce giant allegedly pressured sellers to raise prices on competing sites—and kept your bills high.
The Prime Victory That Changed Everything
On April 15, 2026, California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced a significant win in the state’s ongoing price-fixing case against Amazon . The San Francisco Superior Court denied Amazon’s motion for summary judgment on a key aspect of its defense—ruling that the company cannot argue that removing “Add to Cart” and “Buy Now” buttons from non-compliant products is legal or procompetitive .
This wasn’t just a procedural victory. It meant the case would move forward to a trial scheduled for January 19, 2027, with a preliminary injunction hearing set for July 23, 2026 . And it came with something the public had been waiting years to see: hundreds of previously redacted records, unsealed and submitted as evidence.
According to The Guardian, which reviewed the newly available evidence, these documents include internal emails, sworn testimony, and confidential company presentations obtained during discovery . For the first time, the public could see how California alleges Amazon manipulated prices across the online retail market.
How Amazon’s “Featured Offer” Policy Works
At the center of the case is Amazon’s “featured offer” policy—the internal system that determines which sellers’ products get highlighted most prominently on the platform .
Here’s how California alleges it works :
- Sellers must agree not to offer lower prices elsewhere—on competing sites like Walmart, Target, eBay, and sometimes even on their own websites.
- If a seller violates this agreement, Amazon imposes severe penalties: loss of the “Buy Box” (the default purchase option that accounts for the vast majority of sales), less prominent listings, or even suspension of their ability to sell on Amazon.
- In some cases, Amazon requires sellers to “compensate” the company if other online stores do lower their prices—effectively forcing them to raise prices elsewhere.
“Without basic price competition and different online sites trying to outdo each other with lower prices, prices artificially stabilize at levels higher than would be the case in a competitive market,” Bonta’s office stated. “This occurs not because Amazon competes successfully or because it is a more efficient retailer, but because Amazon is breaking the law” .
The newly unsealed records show that Amazon became concerned even when competitors sold products for just one cent less . The company allegedly pressured vendors to raise their prices on rival platforms or remove their products entirely—all to ensure Amazon appeared to have the lowest prices .
“Project Nessie”: The Secret Algorithm
The California case isn’t the only legal battle Amazon is fighting over its pricing practices. The Federal Trade Commission’s separate antitrust lawsuit has revealed even more startling details.
The FTC alleges that Amazon created a “secret algorithm internally code-named ‘Project Nessie’” to identify specific products where other online stores would follow Amazon’s price increases . “Amazon used Project Nessie to extract more than a billion dollars directly from Americans’ pocketbooks,” the agency claimed.
Regulators say this algorithm contributed to higher prices across the market, costing U.S. households more than $1 billion . Amazon has pushed back strongly, saying the FTC “grossly mischaracterizes” the pricing tool and noting that it stopped using the system several years ago. The company said the tool was “used to try to stop our price matching from resulting in unusual outcomes where prices became so low that they were unsustainable” .
Amazon’s “P&C Protocol”: Manipulating Evidence?
Perhaps the most explosive allegation involves how Amazon managed its internal communications. In a January 2026 court filing, the FTC accused Amazon of engaging in a “years-long effort to manipulate evidence” that could be used against the company in antitrust litigation .
According to the FTC’s motion, Amazon created what it called the “P&C Protocol”—a set of policies under which lawyers, employees, and executives would :
- Alter internal business documents to remove potentially incriminating language about anticompetitive conduct
- Insert legal justifications in the guise of business judgments
- Scrub discussions of sensitive topics including competition, pricing, and Buy Box suppression
- Delete documents that violated these policies, preserving only sanitized versions
The FTC argued that these changes to business documents “are not legal advice,” yet Amazon withheld them as privileged . “Amazon cannot carry its burden to establish privilege,” the FTC wrote, asking the court to compel production of all documents related to the P&C Protocol.
Amazon has challenged these allegations, calling them “reckless” and accusing the FTC of overreach . The company has maintained that its internal communications practices were appropriate and not intended to thwart the discovery process.
What Amazon Says
Amazon has consistently denied the allegations across both cases. In response to the California ruling, the company emphasized that it remains confident in its position. Regarding the preliminary injunction motion filed in February 2026, Amazon said it was “a transparent attempt to distract from the weakness of its case, coming more than three years after filing its complaint and based on supposedly ‘new’ evidence they have had for years” .
The company has also argued that its pricing practices benefit consumers. Amazon has more than 200 million Prime members in the U.S., and 92% of consumers say they are more likely to purchase items from Amazon than other online retail websites .
What This Means for Your Wallet
If California’s allegations are proven true, the impact on American consumers has been substantial. Bonta put it bluntly: “While consumers face a crisis of affordability, there is no room for anticompetitive pricing practices that impede free market competition and raise prices for consumers” .
The core argument is straightforward: by forcing sellers to maintain higher prices on competing sites, Amazon eliminates the price competition that would otherwise drive costs down. When Walmart, Target, and eBay can’t offer lower prices because Amazon has threatened their suppliers, everyone pays more—not just Amazon customers.
“Amazon doesn’t have cheap prices because of its good business sense,” Bonta said in February. “Amazon’s ‘cheap’ prices are the result of intimidation and illegality that drove up prices for consumers across the marketplace” .
What Happens Next
The legal road ahead is long but clear:
- July 23, 2026: The court will hear California’s request for a preliminary injunction to halt Amazon’s alleged price-fixing practices while the case proceeds .
- January 19, 2027: The full trial is scheduled to begin .
- FTC case ongoing: The federal case continues in Washington’s Western District, with ongoing disputes over evidence and privilege claims .
The newly unsealed records represent a significant shift in public transparency. For years, key details remained hidden behind redactions requested by Amazon. Now, with the court’s ruling, more of the company’s internal communications are seeing daylight .
The Bottom Line
You’ve probably noticed that prices on Amazon don’t seem dramatically lower than elsewhere anymore. According to California and the FTC, that’s not an accident—it’s the intended outcome of a system designed to eliminate price competition across the entire online retail market.
The newly unsealed records offer the clearest picture yet of how that system allegedly works. Whether Amazon ultimately prevails or not, one thing is certain: the way Americans shop online—and what they pay—is at the center of one of the most significant antitrust battles in a generation.
For now, the case moves forward. And for the first time, the public can see much of the evidence that will determine whether Amazon’s “low prices” were the result of efficiency—or illegal coercion.