Amazon and Amazon Web Services are defending an unusually broad slate of active lawsuits, and the Amazon and AWS lawsuits filed since 2023 already account for more than $3 billion in settlements and jury verdicts, with a federal antitrust trial and multiple state actions still ahead. The cases fall into a few recognizable buckets: federal consumer protection and antitrust enforcement, patent infringement against AWS, class actions over refunds and privacy, and state suits over delivery practices and warehouse labor.
The $2.5 Billion FTC Prime Settlement
The largest resolved matter is the Federal Trade Commission’s Prime enrollment case. On September 25, 2025, the FTC announced a $2.5 billion settlement with Amazon over allegations that the company enrolled tens of millions of shoppers into Prime through confusing sign-up screens and then made cancellation deliberately hard. The settlement came just after a jury trial began in Seattle.
The FTC alleged violations of the FTC Act and the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act, pointing to internal Amazon documents describing the enrollment process as a “shady world” and a cancellation flow internally nicknamed the “Iliad” that required customers to move through multiple screens. Two Amazon executives, Senior Vice President Neil Lindsay and Vice President Jamil Ghani, were named individually. Before the settlement, U.S. District Judge John Chun ruled that Amazon violated consumer protection law by collecting billing information before fully disclosing membership terms.
How the $2.5 Billion Breaks Down
The settlement includes a $1 billion civil penalty, which the FTC called the largest it has ever secured for a rule violation, plus $1.5 billion in consumer refunds covering roughly 35 million customers. The Commission approved the deal 3–0 and it was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. Amazon admitted no wrongdoing. The consent order runs ten years for the company and three years for the named executives.
Going forward, Amazon must clearly disclose Prime’s cost, auto-renewal terms, and cancellation process during sign-up, provide an obvious button to decline Prime rather than misleading alternatives like “No, I don’t want Free Shipping,” and offer cancellation through the same medium used to sign up.
Who Qualifies for a Refund
Eligible customers can receive up to $51. To qualify, you must be a U.S. Prime customer who signed up through one of the challenged enrollment flows between June 23, 2019, and June 23, 2025, and used no more than three Prime benefits in any 12-month period. Automatic refunds went out in November and December 2025 to the clearest cases. Amazon started mailing and emailing claim notices in January 2026 to other potentially eligible customers, with payments from the claims process expected in late 2026.
The FTC Antitrust Case Heading to Trial
Separate from the Prime settlement, the FTC and 17 state attorneys general sued Amazon in September 2023 for allegedly maintaining an illegal monopoly over online marketplace services. The case is pending before Judge Chun in the Western District of Washington, and trial is scheduled to begin on October 13, 2026, on liability only, bifurcated from any remedies phase.
The FTC alleges Amazon punishes third-party sellers who post lower prices elsewhere by stripping them of “Buy Box” placement, where 98% of sales occur, burying their listings, or removing them from the marketplace. The complaint describes a pricing algorithm codenamed “Project Nessie” that the FTC says identified products where Amazon could raise prices and expect competitors to follow, extracting over $1 billion from American households. The FTC also alleges Amazon forces sellers to use Fulfillment by Amazon to qualify for Prime, and that it degraded search results by prioritizing paid advertising.
A second amended complaint filed in October 2024 added allegations that Amazon employees systematically used Signal’s disappearing-message feature to destroy more than two years of potentially relevant communications. On September 30, 2024, Judge Chun largely denied Amazon’s motion to dismiss, allowing most of the 20 federal and state claims to proceed while tossing certain state-law claims from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, and Maryland. Amazon has denied the allegations and says Project Nessie was discontinued years ago.
Patent Verdicts Against AWS
AWS has lost two significant patent trials.
Kove IO: $525 Million Verdict, Now Around $673 Million
In April 2024, a federal jury in the Northern District of Illinois ordered Amazon to pay $525 million to Kove IO, Inc., finding that AWS infringed three Kove patents covering distributed data storage and retrieval technology: U.S. Patent Nos. 7,814,170, 7,103,640, and 7,233,978. The infringing products included Amazon’s S3 storage service and its DynamoDB database. The jury dismissed all 13 of Amazon’s counterclaims with prejudice and rejected Kove’s willfulness argument. Kove had filed the suit in December 2018.
Amazon appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. By April 2025, the judgment Kove was defending had grown to $673 million, reflecting additional damages or interest. The Federal Circuit heard oral arguments on May 8, 2026, and a decision is pending.
Acceleration Bay: $30.5 Million, Potentially Trebled
In September 2024, a Delaware federal jury found that AWS willfully infringed two networking patents held by Acceleration Bay LLC, a patent assertion entity holding patents originally obtained by Boeing. The jury awarded $30.5 million. Infringing products included CloudFront, Virtual Private Cloud, Transit Gateway, and Elastic Cloud Computing. Because the jury found willful infringement, the judge has discretion to triple the damages. Acceleration Bay previously won a $23.4 million verdict against Activision Blizzard over one of the same patents.
$309 Million Return Refund Class Action
In January 2026, Amazon agreed to pay $309 million to settle In re: Amazon Return Policy Litigation in the Western District of Washington. Plaintiffs alleged Amazon withheld refunds, provided incorrect or late refunds, or recharged customers for items already returned, blaming mishandling, missorting, and grading errors in the returns process. The proposed class covers U.S. purchasers who initiated a return of a physical product from Amazon since September 2017 and experienced one of those refund failures. Amazon also agreed to more than $363 million in non-monetary relief to improve its return practices.
Customers in Subclass A, whose returns never completed Amazon’s review process (for example, items lost in transit), are set to receive automatic payments without filing a claim. Subclass B customers, who experienced failed refunds or erroneous recharges, must submit a claim form with proof of purchase. As of early 2026, the settlement was awaiting preliminary approval from U.S. District Judge Jamal Whitehead.
D.C. Prime Delivery Discrimination Suit
On December 4, 2024, District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb sued Amazon in D.C. Superior Court, alleging the company excluded two predominantly Black neighborhoods from Prime’s fastest delivery while continuing to charge full membership prices, in violation of the D.C. Consumer Protection Procedures Act.
According to the complaint, Amazon stopped using its branded delivery fleet in ZIP codes 20019 and 20020, covering Wards 7 and 8, beginning in June 2022, shifting those areas to slower third-party carriers. The share of packages delivered within two days dropped from over 72% in 2021 to roughly 25% in 2023. The suit alleges Amazon never disclosed the change and misled customers who complained. Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said the delivery changes were made to protect driver safety after targeted acts against drivers in those areas. The case was active as of mid-2026.
New Jersey Labor and Discrimination Suits
In October 2025, New Jersey’s Attorney General filed two lawsuits against Amazon two days apart.
Flex Driver Misclassification
On October 20, 2025, Attorney General Matthew Platkin and the state Department of Labor sued Amazon and Amazon Logistics in Essex County Superior Court, alleging the company misclassified its “Flex” delivery drivers as independent contractors. The complaint says the classification deprived drivers of minimum wage protections, overtime, earned sick leave, and workers’ compensation, and cheated state unemployment and disability funds out of millions in required contributions. The state is seeking a jury trial, back wages, and fines.
Pregnancy and Disability Discrimination
On October 22, Platkin and the state Division on Civil Rights filed a separate ten-count complaint alleging a widespread pattern of discrimination against pregnant and disabled warehouse workers. Amazon employs roughly 50,000 warehouse workers in New Jersey, and over a two-year period those employees submitted more than 27,000 requests for pregnancy- and disability-related accommodations. The complaint describes a “byzantine” accommodation process with weeks-long delays, “alarmingly poor” recordkeeping, and a seven-day medical documentation deadline that frequently resulted in denials. Workers who requested accommodations were allegedly placed on unpaid leave by default, and Amazon’s automated productivity system allegedly disciplined or fired employees with medical restrictions who could not meet standard quotas.
Amazon said it complies with the federal Pregnant Workers Fairness Act and New Jersey’s anti-discrimination law, cited a pregnancy accommodation approval rate above 99%, and noted it offers up to 20 weeks of paid leave for eligible birthing parents. Both cases remain active.
Alexa Privacy Class Actions
Amazon faces two parallel Alexa privacy cases. In the Western District of Washington, plaintiffs allege that Alexa devices recorded and stored voice data even when not triggered by the activation word. In July 2025, U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik granted class certification for owners of registered Alexa devices, though he denied certification for people without registered devices. He rejected Amazon’s argument that individualized issues should defeat class treatment as “mere speculation.”
In the Northern District of Illinois, plaintiffs sued under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, alleging Amazon collected voiceprints through Voice ID without required notice or written consent. One plaintiff alleged her voiceprint was captured simply because she spoke near someone else’s Alexa device. In November 2023, the court denied Amazon’s motion to dismiss, adopting a strict reading of the state biometric privacy law.
Audible Antitrust Case
Amazon’s audiobook subsidiary, Audible, is defending Reiss v. Audible Inc. in the Southern District of New York. Authors and rights holders allege Audible has monopolized audiobook retail distribution through exclusivity deals, price restrictions, and distribution fees ranging from 60% to 75% of revenue. In June 2025, Judge Jennifer Rochon denied Audible’s motion to dismiss, finding the plaintiffs adequately alleged anticompetitive conduct and direct injury. The proposed class covers authors and rights holders who paid Audible a distribution fee of 60% or more since June 2020. The case is in discovery.
One Older Fight, Now Closed: JEDI
AWS’s earlier legal fight over the Pentagon’s Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud contract, worth up to $10 billion, no longer affects the current docket. After the Department of Defense awarded the contract to Microsoft in October 2019, AWS filed a protest in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims alleging political interference. The litigation ran through 2021, with a federal judge refusing to dismiss key portions of AWS’s case, until DOD canceled the JEDI program altogether because of the delays and shifting technology needs.