Update
This alert originally published on April 21, 2025, has been updated in light of the FTC’s announcement to further defer enforcement of some provisions of the Negative Option Rule to July 14, 2025. The previous compliance deadline was May 14, 2025.
If you’re in the business of selling subscription services to your customers in 2025, compliance is about to get a lot trickier. Tune in below for some sweeping (and increasingly complex) updates from the FTC and individual states governing auto-renewals.
- The FTC’s final Rule Concerning Recurring Subscriptions and Other Negative Option Plans (colloquially known as the “Click to Cancel Rule”) is already partially in effect and is slated to go into effect in full in July 2025.
- Since the FTC’s new Rule does not preempt more restrictive state laws, states from coast to coast are free to enact their own narrower laws on the topic. We are seeing a wave of new state laws with several requirements that go above and beyond what the FTC requires – and we expect state level enforcement and class actions to be on the rise accordingly.
Here’s a practical breakdown of what’s changing and what businesses need to do now.