A group of House Democrats is making another run at restoring the Federal Trade Commission’s ability to claw back money for defrauded consumers, reviving legislation that has languished since the Supreme Court gutted the agency’s primary redress tool in 2021.
Rep. Jan Schakowsky [D-Ill.], ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade, reintroduced the Consumer Protection and Recovery Act alongside Rep. Yvette Clarke [D-N.Y.] and Rep. Rob Menendez [D-N.J.]. The bill would amend Section 13(b) of the FTC Act to explicitly authorize the agency to seek monetary relief, including restitution, refunds, contract rescission and reformation, return of property, and disgorgement of ill-gotten gains, in federal court.
The legislation responds to the Supreme Court’s unanimous 2021 decision in AMG Capital Management, LLC v. FTC, which held that Section 13(b) authorizes injunctions but not the monetary remedies the agency had pursued under the provision for more than four decades. Before AMG, the FTC used Section 13(b) to return billions of dollars to consumers harmed by fraud, scams, and deceptive practices.
The bill text also builds in guardrails. Courts could not order equitable relief for violations occurring more than 10 years before the FTC files suit, though time a defendant spends outside the United States would not count toward that clock. Disgorgement awards would be offset by amounts paid or property returned under other remedies, preventing double recovery. The amendments would apply to actions pending on or commenced after enactment.
Schakowsky noted the measure previously cleared the House with bipartisan support in the 117th Congress, though it stalled in the Senate. Menendez framed the reintroduction around household budget pressures, arguing consumers facing rising costs cannot afford losses to deceptive practices.
For the ARM industry, the stakes are familiar. A restored 13(b) would give the FTC a faster path to monetary remedies than the administrative route it has leaned on since AMG. The agency has continued targeting collection industry conduct through Section 19 and other authorities, but a revived 13(b) would materially expand its leverage in settlement negotiations and litigation. Passage remains a steep climb in the current Congress, but the bill is worth tracking as a marker of where Democratic enforcement priorities sit heading into 2027.
