Amazon Repeats View that Anti-Firing Restriction Negates CPSC Actions

Amazon November 5 pressed its position that CPSC's statutory structure is grounds to vacate commission actions. This was in response to an October Department of Justice (DOJ) brief that sought to separate the government's own attack elsewhere on commissioners' anti-firing protections from the validity of CPSC regulatory powers (PSL, 10/20/25).

Amazon's response, in the forced recall case in Maryland U.S. district court, pointed out that both sides agree that the CPSA's anti-firing provisions are unconstitutional. However, it disagreed that those provisions did not cause harm:

"Despite the Final Order's prescription of actions that are purportedly 'necessary to protect the public'…the Commission stayed the Final Order shortly after the Department of Justice stated that Commissioners are removable at will…The Commission's about-face regarding the urgency of implementing the Final Order suggests the Order may have come out differently, at least in part, if the Commissioners had known, before they issued the Order, that the President could remove them at will. This, in turn, provides reason to believe the removal provision harmed Amazon."

Amazon raised this line of argument (PSL, 9/1/25) after the Supreme Court stayed a lower court's reinstatement of the three fired Democratic commissioners in anticipation that the executive branch would bring a case to the high court against such anti-firing provisions. That since did occur in a case involving the Federal Trade Commission (see related story in this issue).

Amazon also revisited its earlier assertions of due process violations related to administrative the adjudication process being controlled by CPSC while the agency also was a party in the recall dispute. It relatedly argued that CPSC gave different treatment than it gave to other companies refusing to recall or not responding to recall inquiries. Those instead increasingly trigger CPSC's unilateral warning power.

The Amazon brief reiterated issues it has raised throughout the process on whether it meets the CPSA definition of distributor, whether CPSC followed the Administrative Procedure Act, whether the order was a 1st Amendment violation, and whether CPSC exceeded its authorities.