Inside Competition: December 2025

Inside Competition is designed to help companies identify important legal developments in antitrust and competition law in the United States.

In addition to reporting on antitrust litigation and enforcement actions over the previous month, this bulletin addresses policy developments, regulatory trends, and agency priorities shaping competition law today.

Our goal is to provide insights that help businesses identify risk, respond to investigations, and compete in a rapidly evolving legal landscape.

Civil litigation

Egg purchasers bring coordinated antitrust actions alleging benchmark pricing manipulation and improper information exchange. King Kullen Grocery Co., Inc. v. Cal-Maine Foods, Inc., et al., case number 1:25-cv-02274, a putative nationwide class action on behalf of direct purchasers, alleges that its defendants – five of the largest United States egg producers, price reporting firm Urner Barry, online spot market Egg Clearinghouse, Inc. (ECI), and national cooperative United Egg Producers (UEP) – inflated egg prices by manipulating Urner Barry price quotations and ECI trades. Similar claims were brought in Illinois federal court on behalf of a putative direct purchaser class in Phil N Cindy’s Lunch, Inc. v. Cal Maine Foods, Inc., case number No. 1:25 cv 14082, and in Wisconsin federal court on behalf of a putative indirect purchaser class in Edlin v. Cal Maine Foods, Inc., case number 3:25 cv 00946. All three complaints reference an ongoing Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation into egg industry pricing, which plaintiffs argue precipitated recent egg price declines. Requested relief includes injunctive and equitable relief, treble damages, and, in Wisconsin, state law damages for the indirect purchasers. 

Software provider challenges New York’s new rent law as an unconstitutional speech ban. In RealPage, Inc. v. James, case number 1:25-cv-09847, revenue management software (RMS) company RealPage seeks preliminary and permanent injunctive relief in New York federal court regarding a state statute that will become effective on December 15, 2025. The new law deems the use of RMS to be an unlawful “coordinating function” when the software analyzes and processes data “from two or more residential rental property owners or managers.” Violations would subject software providers and users to civil and criminal penalties. RealPage argues the statute is an unconstitutional restriction on protected speech. It also emphasizes that current RMS offerings exclude non-public competitor data and that existing antitrust laws already address collusion. The New York Attorney General (AG) has agreed to stay enforcement of the new law until RealPage’s preliminary injunction has been decided. 

Criminal enforcement

States reassess criminal antitrust enforcement amid divergent authorities and penalty gaps. Senior enforcers from Ohio, California, New York, and other states have recently addressed the landscape for criminal antitrust enforcement, highlighting legal constraints, policy trade-offs, and renewed coordination with federal authorities. Ohio’s Antitrust Bureau Chief said the state is still “grappling” with how to bring criminal cases, particularly bid rigging, wary of over-penalizing small operators while larger firms’ conduct is pursued civilly. New York, empowered by the Donnelly Act to bring criminal cases without referrals, flagged that its civil and criminal penalties have not been updated since 1972 and remain too weak to deter misconduct. Minnesota has resumed criminal filings, while California has enacted legislation increasing civil and criminal penalties.

DOJ closes concrete additives price fixing probe; court lifts stay as private suits press on with amended claims. The DOJ Antitrust Division closed its grand jury investigation into alleged price fixing in the concrete additives industry without filing charges, prompting the Southern District of New York to lift a discovery stay in related multi-district civil litigation. Multi-district litigation (MDL) plaintiffs filed a corrected second amended consolidated class action complaint on November 24, 2025. Numerous defendants in the MDL have acknowledged they were subjects of the DOJ probe, including Sika and Cinven.

Nevada court sentences white collar executive for fraud and fixing nurse wages. A Nevada federal court sentenced Eduardo Lopez to more than three years imprisonment, a $550,000 criminal fine, more than $10 million in forfeiture of proceeds from the fraudulent sale of his home healthcare company, and nearly $2.5 million in restitution to the purchaser. The sentence follows Lopez’s April 2025 conviction for conspiracy to fix wages of home healthcare nurses and five counts of fraud for concealing a government antitrust investigation during the sale of his company. Assistant AG Abigail Slater noted this case is the DOJ’s first wage fixing conviction. The Antitrust Division’s San Francisco office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)’s International Corruption Unit investigated the case alongside the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Nevada. 

Civil enforcement

Judge rules in favor of Meta in FTC in antitrust. In FTC v. Meta Platforms, Inc., No. 1:20-cv-03590, the US District Court for the District of Columbia found that Meta (f/k/a Facebook)’s purchase of Instagram and WhatsApp did not create an illegal social media monopoly and dismissed the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)’s suit. After years of litigation culminating in a bench trial, the district court rejected the FTC’s narrow market definition and found that the FTC “struggled to fix the boundaries of Meta’s product market.” The court found that Meta may have held monopoly power in the past, but that the agency failed to show current monopoly power.

Melissa Holyoak leaves FTC for US Attorney’s Office. On November 17, 2025, FTC Commissioner Melissa Holyoak left the commission to become Interim US Attorney for the District of Utah, leaving two remaining commissioners at the FTC. The FTC’s announcement of Holyoak’s departure coincided with her final day as a commissioner. The FTC did not announce any plans for a new commissioner appointment.

DOJ seeks settlement in RealPage price fixing case. On November 25, 2025, the DOJ announced a proposed final settlement in its antitrust case against RealPage, Inc. in the Middle District of North Carolina. The proposed settlement would require, among other things, RealPage to not use competitors’ non-public, competitively sensitive information for rental pricing recommendations, accept a court-appointed monitor, and limit any geographic area to no smaller than the state level.

Merger review and challenges

FTC loses challenge to medical device coatings company acquisition. On November 10, 2025, the US District Court for the North District of Illinois ruled private equity firm GTCR can proceed with its acquisition of Surmodics, denying the FTC’s bid to enjoin the deal pending an administrative hearing. The district court found that the FTC’s proposed market definition improperly excluded self-supply by medical device manufacturers, and concluded that the parties’ proposed divestiture addressed any remaining competitive concerns. The FTC abandoned its administrative challenge two weeks later. 

Contacts

Learn more about our Antitrust and Competition practice by contacting our editors and contributors:

Managing editors: Greg Casas, Becky Caruso, Emily Collins

Administrative editors: William Conway, Janie Rowland, Claire Smith

Contributors: Brian Boyle, Mandy Chan, Thomas Corrigan, Mike Keramidas, Paolo Morante, Leslie Rebnord 

^{For professional responsibility reasons, these summaries may not include discussions of developments relating to certain matters.}