On Friday, March 8th, The LPE Project, YLS LPE Student Group, American Constitution Society, Yale Law Democrats, Solomon Center for Health Law & Policy, and Information Society Project joined to host a lunch talk with Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan. Chair Khan, YLS ‘17, discussed key recent initiatives at the FTC and the nature of the agency’s new approach; she explored how the new FTC strategy has evolved in response to recent successes and challenges; and she examined what this all suggests for academic work on these topics.
Since her appointment in June 2021, Chair Khan has pushed for aggressive competition enforcement including increased consideration of issues of market power, in line with the original purpose of the antitrust laws. Under Chair Khan, the FTC recently released updated Merger Guidelines that increase scrutiny of proposed acquisitions and successfully challenged a series of mergers in the healthcare industry. Chair Khan has also pushed for expanded consideration of the interaction between labor and competition issues, as exemplified by the FTC’s proposed rule on non-compete agreements and the agency’s Policy Statement on gig work. Chair Khan is an Associate Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, currently on leave serving in the federal government. Before joining the FTC she also served as counsel to the House Antitrust Subcommittee, as an FTC adviser, and as legal director at the Open Markets Institute. Chair Khan is a graduate of Yale Law School and has written extensively on antimonopoly issues, including her Note on “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox.”