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August 11, 2025 - WASHINGTON — Last Friday, U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, released the following statement on the Department of Justice’s proposed settlement with Greystar.
“This settlement is good news for renters across the country. The largest landlord in the United States has agreed to stop using anticompetitive algorithms to raise rents. I pushed for this case, and it was carried through by Department of Justice antitrust officials in two administrations and a bipartisan group of state attorneys general. It’s critical the Justice Department continues to prosecute the case against RealPage and other major landlords to provide relief for all renters. And we must pass my bill to stop this conduct across the economy.”
In November 2022, Klobuchar, along with Senators Durbin and Booker, urged the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate potential anticompetitive conduct affecting apartment rent rates, such as the algorithmic coordination and other anticompetitive practices alleged in the Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit against RealPage and various landlords.
As Chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust and Consumer Rights, Klobuchar held two hearings in late 2023 exploring how algorithms can be used to harm consumers, Examining Competition and Consumer Rights in Housing Markets and The New Invisible Hand? The Impact of Algorithms on Competition and Consumer Rights. Both hearings highlighted the potential for laundering nonpublic competitor data in a pricing algorithm to raise prices and included calls for the reforms in this bill.
Earlier this year, Klobuchar and eight colleagues re-introduced the Preventing Algorithmic Collusion Act to strengthen current price fixing law Klobuchar’s legislation will:
- Close a loophole in current law by presuming a price-fixing “agreement,” when direct competitors share competitively sensitive information through a pricing algorithm to raise prices;
- Increase transparency by requiring companies that use algorithms to set prices to disclose that fact and give antitrust enforcers the ability to audit the pricing algorithm when there are concerns it may be harming consumers;
- Ban companies from using competitively sensitive information from their direct competitors to inform or train a pricing algorithm;
- Direct the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to study pricing algorithms’ impact on competition.
Source: Senator Amy Klobuchar
