Goodbye, ‘Click to Cancel’: Court strikes down FTC rule that was set to go into effect July 14

Want to cancel that newspaper subscription or gym membership? Sorry, but you may have to pick up the phone after all.

On Tuesday, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the Federal Trade Commission’s “Click to Cancel” rule, which had been set to go into effect on July 14. The rule had would have required businesses to make it as easy to cancel subscriptions as it is to sign up for them — no more “click to subscribe, call to cancel.”

Three judges — two appointed by President Trump, one by President George H. W. Bush — found that the FTC’s rulemaking process was flawed and did not include early analysis of the rule’s possible economic effects.

Some states have passed their own click-to-cancel laws: California did so in 2018 (which is why it sometimes works to change your address to California if you want to cancel something online) and the Pennsylvania House passed one on Tuesday.

The FTC said last year that it had received more than 16,000 public comments about the proposed rule and “received nearly 70 consumer complaints per day on average, up from 42 per day in 2021.” In 2021, we wrote about some of the difficulties people run into when they try to cancel news subscriptions.