The Senate voted 69 to 28 on Tuesday (June 15) to appoint antitrust expert and known tech critic Lina Khan as a commissioner to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), numerous news outlets, including Axios, reported.
“The overwhelming support in the Senate for Lina Khan’s nomination to serve on the Federal Trade Commission is a big win for fair competition in our country,” according to a statement by FTC Commissioner Rohit Chopra. “There is a growing consensus that the FTC must turn the page on the failed policies spanning multiple administrations.”
He pointed to Khan’s “extraordinary record” and anticipates she will be “instrumental” in assisting the FTC “chart a new course.”
Khan is known for her expertise in applying anti-competition legislation to the tech industry. While a student at Yale’s law school, she wrote a paper that got the attention of policymakers. The paper detailed how antitrust legislation didn’t check Amazon’s power, the New York Times reported.
Khan’s nomination received bipartisan endorsement last month from the U.S. Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee before the nomination went before the full Senate on Tuesday (June 15).
The youngest of the five FTC commissioners, Khan is a Columbia University Law School professor and previously served on the U.S. House Judiciary Committee’s Democratic staff.
President Joe Biden’s nominee — his first for an antitrust post — testified at a Senate committee in April that federal agencies are not doing enough to effectively oversee big tech’s dominance. She pointed to Google and Apple as having especially high levels of power and stated that more oversight was needed.
Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives proposed five legislative drafts aimed at big tech. The proposed laws address big tech’s dominance; prohibit companies from acquiring their competitors; and prohibiting shopping platforms like Amazon from selling their own products in competition with the merchants selling on the marketplace.
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