Amazon Rebuked for 'Reckless' Lawsuit Against Product Safety Agency

Consumer advocates this week denounced a lawsuit filed by e-commerce giant Amazon against the federal agency tasked with promoting product safety and alerting the public to risks, a move that comes amid the Trump administration's war on government regulators.

Amazon's lawsuit, filed earlier this month in a Maryland federal court, claims that the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is unconstitutional. The Seattle-based company—which raked in $638 billion in 2024 revenue—says it should not be held legally responsible for products sold on its site by third-party vendors.

"Amazon is suffering, and will continue to suffer, irreparable harm from being subjected to an order issued by an unconstitutionally structured agency," the company's complaint states.

"Let's be real: Amazon would gleefully sell products that could kill your kids for a 5-cent profit."

Last July, the five CPSC commissioners unanimously determined that Amazon is "a 'distributor' of products that are defective or fail to meet federal consumer product safety standards, and therefore bears legal responsibility for their recall" under the Consumer Product Safety Act (CPSA). More than 400,000 products were subject to the CPSC order, including "faulty carbon monoxide detectors, hairdryers without electrocution protection, and children's sleepwear that violated federal flammability standards."

In January, the CPSC issued a decision and order outlining steps Amazon must take "to notify purchasers and the public about hazardous products for which the commission determined Amazon was a distributor under the CPSA."

Critics allege that by suing the CPSC, Amazon is attempting to avoid responsibility for shipping dangerous products to its hundreds of millions of customers.

"Instead of demonstrating its commitment to consumer safety, Amazon has fought the CPSC every step of the way for more than three years, and now it's going to court," Consumer Reports director of safety advocacy William Wallace said this week. "The law is clear that Amazon is a 'distributor' in this case and must carry out a recall."

Wallace continued:

Amazon wants to be held blameless for the safety of products sold by third parties on its platform, which is bad enough—but what's even worse is that the company is attacking the legal foundation on which the CPSC rests. Amazon's suit suggests the company thinks the people of the United States would be better off without an independent, bipartisan safety agency to enforce our laws and protect consumers from dangerous products. We strongly disagree and condemn Amazon's reckless constitutional claims.

"It's absurd to suggest that because a company hosts a marketplace online it should be exempt from sensible requirements that help get hazardous products out of people's homes and prevent them from being sold," Wallace added. "The court should reject Amazon's arguments. Taking Amazon at its word would mean hazardous products slipping through the cracks, even when they are capable of injuring or killing people."

Wallace's remarks came a day after the CPSC issued warnings for products including a toddler playset due to what the agency says is a risk of serious injury or suffocation death, a mattress posing a fire risk, and a brand of liquid Benadryl whose packaging is not child-resistant.

Amazon and SpaceX—owned by Elon Musk, the de facto head of the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency—have also spearheaded lawsuits claiming the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency tasked with protecting workers' rights, is unconstitutional.

The companies and their billionaire leaders have found an ally in U.S. President Donald Trump, whose administration has signaled that it will not defend the precedent set by Humphrey's Executor v. United States, a 1935 Supreme Court ruling protecting commissioners at independent federal agencies from being fired by the president at will, if it is challenged in court.

Georgetown University Law Center professor Victoria Nourse told The Washington Post this week that right-wing lawyers are emboldened by the administration's stance, describing lawsuits like those filed by Amazon and SpaceX as "little fires being lit all over Washington."

"What Trump wants and what the companies want is to get rid of all this regulation, period," Nourse added.