Court Throws Out FTC’s ‘Click to Cancel’ Subscriptions Rule Change (For Now)

The Federal Trade Commission’s “Click to Cancel” rule, which would have required publishers to make it far easier for customers to leave their subscriptions beginning next week, has been struck down by an appeals court.

The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Tuesday that the FTC had failed to carry out the regulatory analysis necessary before pressing ahead the change.

A spokesperson for the FTC declined to comment on the ruling and whether the body would attempt to reintroduce the rule after carrying out the missing analysis.

The rule, which was due to come into effect on July 14, would most famously have required publishers and anyone else running a subscription business to make it as easy to cancel a sub as it was to start it—killing, for example, retention strategies that allow readers to sign up online but only make cancelling possible by phone.

The rule would also require publishers to:

• Conspicuously disclose all terms relevant to the subscription, for example cost and when the subscription will renew (or, in the case of a free trial period, kick in)
• Separately, conspicuously seek consent from the consumer for the fact that they’ll be charged recurrently
• Not misrepresent any costs or terms involved in the subscription

The rule change would apply not only to consumer subscription products but also to any B2B transactions where the customer is automatically billed unless they specifically say otherwise.

The change is a response to subscription businesses that, critics allege, have purposely made it difficult to cancel their services and significantly rankled consumers. Last year, The New York Times agreed to a $2.4 million settlement to see off a California class action lawsuit that alleged it had made unsubscribing “exceedingly difficult.”

The court’s ruling does not necessarily kill the changes permanently, however, because it did not engage with the substance of the proposed rule.

FTC rules require the commission to publish preliminary and, later, final regulatory impact analyses whenever it intends to make a rule change which could have $100 million or greater of economic impact in the U.S. (i.e. if U.S. businesses have to spend more than that amount to implement the change). These analyses require the FTC to consider alternative changes to the one it is proposing and to give affected businesses the chance to respond.

The FTC did not publish a preliminary regulatory impact analysis because it said the impact would be less than $100 million—something a judge subsequently said had been incorrect. But at that point, rather than going back and publishing the preliminary analysis, the FTC decided it was far enough along in the process that it should just publish the final impact analysis.

This, the appeals court said, was a “fatal” procedural misstep because it deprived affected businesses time and opportunity to respond to the proposed change.

The FTC has continued to pursue the click to cancel rule change under the Trump administration, although the new chair of the commission, Andrew Ferguson, earlier voted against the amendment in 2023.

Regardless of the FTC’s intentions, similar rules are coming into effect both at the state level and internationally:

• A California rule that enacts similar cancellation and consent changes—albeit only for B2C transactions—came into effect at the start of this month.
• A New York equivalent is currently moving through the legislature (atop existing rules introduced in 2023 requiring advance notice that a subscription is set to renew).
• The Pennsylvania House of Representatives passed a similar bill this week, which is now set to go to state senators.
• The European Union will require anyone selling digital services into the bloc to provide an easy cancellation button to consumers by 26 June 2026.
• Provisions in the UK’s Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act will require businesses to make it easier to unsubscribe some time from spring 2026.