The US "click to cancel" rule was made, then vacated

Why this case matters

For nine months the United States had a rule that said cancelling a subscription must be at least as easy as starting one. Then it did not.

The rule was not struck down because a court decided the requirement was wrong. It was vacated because the FTC did not do a preliminary regulatory analysis that section 22 of the FTC Act required. The substance was never reached.

That distinction matters for anyone trying to understand why the interfaces have not changed.

The sequence

16 October 2024. The FTC finalises the amended Negative Option Rule, known as Click-to-Cancel.

8 July 2025. The Eighth Circuit vacates it, holding the Commission should have conducted the preliminary regulatory analysis required by 15 U.S.C. 57b-3(b)(1).

11 March 2026. The FTC issues an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, asking whether and how to amend the rule that survived — the prenotification rule dating from the 1970s, which was written for book and record clubs sending physical goods by post.

What is left

Two things.

The old Negative Option Rule, which addresses prenotification plans and does not fit the way subscriptions are sold now.

And the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act, which is a statute and therefore untouched by the vacatur. ROSCA is what the FTC used against Amazon and Chegg, and both of those actions came after the rule was vacated. Enforcement continues; it is simply case by case, one company at a time.

The complaint curve

The FTC’s own notice supplies the number that describes the problem: complaints about negative option practices rose from at least 33 a day in late 2020 to more than 90 a day in 2025, and total more than 100,000 over five years.

Nearly tripling in five years, through a period in which the agency was actively rulemaking on the subject.

What it means for a reader

Practically: in the United States there is no general legal guarantee that cancelling will be simple. There is a statute that lets the FTC act against the worst examples after the fact, and there are enforcement actions large enough to change individual companies’ behaviour.

Which puts the burden back on the reader, and makes the boring defences the real ones — a card that can be locked to a merchant, a calendar reminder before the trial ends, and a monthly look at the statement.