Three decisions in three days last week showed us how Americans can keep corporate Goliaths in check, even when the federal government refuses to.
On Wednesday, a jury found that the mega-concert promoter Live Nation and its ticket-selling subsidiary Ticketmaster had illegally monopolized the live music industry. Around the same time, a California judge moved forward with the claim that the e-commerce giant Amazon had strong-armed small businesses on pricing. And on Friday, a federal judge halted the merger of two of the largest owners of local television stations in the country. A group of state attorneys general had argued that the merger would raise prices and overly concentrate control over local news.
We have watched these cases closely; one of us helped file and litigate the Live Nation case. At a time when the Trump administration has largely abandoned vigorous and fair enforcement of the antitrust laws, these wins serve as a reminder that ordinary Americans and local officials can hold corporate lawbreakers to account.
Congress designed our antitrust laws to restrain concentrations of economic power and to protect Americans from coercion and the arbitrary exercise of private power. Justice Thurgood Marshall described antitrust laws as the “Magna Carta of free enterprise” — as essential to economic freedom as the Bill of Rights is to our personal freedoms. Senator John Sherman of Ohio, for whom our first federal antitrust law is named, explained that the American experiment could not tolerate an autocrat of trade any more than it could a monarch.
Notably, lawmakers explicitly recognized that antimonopoly laws were too vital to limit their enforcement to the federal government. That’s why any American can sue. It’s also why there is a long tradition of states maintaining and enforcing their own antitrust laws. And it’s why jury trials have been a foundation of our civil justice system, with everyday citizens making judgments about the rule of law.
For decades, Americans were well aware that our government had a key role to play in structuring and checking corporate power. The 1912 election hinged on how presidential candidates would reckon with “the problem of the trusts.” Through the 1960s, congressional hearings and investigations helped inform lawmakers and Americans about the costs of monopoly power, in markets ranging from energy to professional sports.
But as policymakers started to abandon antimonopoly principles in the late 1970s, these issues retreated from public consciousness. Business interests and prominent antitrust scholars actively sought to make antitrust questions the sole purview of a small class of experts rather than the public at large.
Today, our government litigates antitrust cases far less often than it did in the 1970s, but when it does, it rarely argues them before a jury. One frequent justification for this shift is that these cases are too complex for ordinary people to grasp.
Yet juries decide complicated cases every day. From money laundering schemes to patent cases, juries routinely hear complex evidence, follow instructions and decide right from wrong. And people have been engaging in commerce in one form or another for centuries. Certainly, questions of monopoly power and economic coercion benefit from the views of people with a variety of experiences navigating our economy.
The Live Nation verdict was a watershed moment. The Justice Department filed the case in 2024 with attorneys general from 40 states and the District of Columbia. As the world’s largest live entertainment company, Live Nation is involved at almost every stage of a live music event. It manages artists, promotes tours, owns major concert venues and controls some 80 percent of primary concert ticketing at major venues through its subsidiary Ticketmaster. It’s also a data powerhouse. As the complaint noted, Live Nation has used this power to bully venues and coerce artists, as well as hike fees for fans.
That’s why so many longtime observers of Live Nation’s conduct were disturbed by reports that the Trump administration was looking to settle the case — and abruptly did so last month for paltry fixes. The move follows a broader pattern of political weaponization and pay-to-play, with accusations of how the administration’s antitrust decisions increasingly reflect the sway of lobbyists with White House connections, rather than an impartial assessment of the facts and the law.
Fortunately, over 30 state attorneys general — from deep blue California and New York to ruby red Tennessee and Texas — rejected the deal and pressed forward. After presenting evidence for a few more weeks before a jury in Lower Manhattan, the states notched an across-the-board win.
The Live Nation ruling demonstrates the important role that state attorneys general play in our antitrust system. State A.G.s, more directly attuned to local concerns and economic pain points, are often our first line of defense against corporate misconduct. They also have a long history of pursuing some of the worst and most powerful offenders, especially when the federal government is missing in action.
Critical lessons follow from last week’s decisions.
Enforcers — whether our government, our states, harmed business or individuals — should continue bringing antitrust cases to juries. Juries do not systematically favor plaintiffs or defendants. They favor credible evidence, clear explanation and conduct that passes the test of basic fairness. Juries have returned verdicts in favor of home sellers who were being overcharged in Missouri, young social media users who were harmed by addictive algorithms and a Texas steel company that was the victim of an illegal boycott. When government officials fail to stop corporate abuse, jury trials can be a key catalyst to force real change.
Our government must also address the other ways big business and wealthy interests have pushed antitrust enforcement beyond the reach of everyday people. These include the ballooning costs of litigation, the growing “arms race” of hiring exorbitant experts even as judges increasingly question their value and the proliferation of forced arbitration clauses and other procedural tactics that block people from going to court.
Finally, enforcers should prioritize engaging directly with and learning from Americans across the country. Too often, the information guiding government is overwhelmingly skewed toward those well-steeped in the power corridors of Washington. Massive blind spots in the economic pain points that Americans face in their daily lives has contributed to the growing fecklessness of antitrust enforcement — and a lack of trust that the government is fighting for working people.
The jury box is one of the most direct channels through which ordinary people can hold concentrated power accountable. Corporations may choose to behave differently, knowing that everyday citizens, rather than specialized elites, may judge their conduct.
As our country reckons with pressing questions of how to govern our markets and economy, we’d be wise to continue broadening the role of the people who must live with the daily consequences of these decisions.
Lina M. Khan is an associate law professor at Columbia Law School. She served as chair of the Federal Trade Commission from 2021 to 2025. Doha Mekki is a senior fellow at the Center for Law and the Economy at Columbia Law School. She served as principal deputy assistant attorney general for the antitrust division from 2021until 2024.
Source photograph by Erik McGregor/LightRocket; source footage by Warner Bros. Studios, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Viacom Media Networks, BBC Motion Gallery Editorial/BBC News, Universal Studios, via Getty Images.
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