Supreme Court rules that consumers can sue Apple for App Store practices

Apple took a trip to the Supreme Court and left with a loss.

In a bipartisan 5-4 decision, the highest court in the U.S. ruled that consumers can sue Apple for anti-competitive practices regarding the App Store on Monday. The opinion, authored by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, declined to take a specific stance regarding Apple’s business practices.

iPhone owners filed a class-action lawsuit against Apple back in 2011. The App Store is the only way to legally purchase iPhone apps, but Apple charges developers an annual $99 fee to operate on the digital marketplace. In addition, Apple takes a 30 percent cut of every sale, which the lawsuit alleged was passed down to consumers in the form of overpriced apps.

Apple argued that consumers couldn’t sue the company because they aren’t “direct purchasers” of apps. If an app is overpriced, the fault lies with developers and not Apple, the iPhone maker claimed. However, a small majority of SCOTUS justices disagreed, meaning antitrust lawsuits against Apple can go forward.

“If a retailer has engaged in unlawful monopolistic conduct that has caused consumers to pay higher-than-competitive prices, it does not matter how the retailer structured its relationship with an upstream manufacturer or supplier—whether, for example, the retailer employed a markup or kept a commission,” Kavanaugh wrote.

The Supreme Court decided to take a look at the case back in November. It remains to be seen how, or even if, Apple will suffer because of this ruling, but more antitrust complaints against big tech companies could be coming in the U.S.

The U.S. has been lax on antitrust legislation against tech companies compared to the European Union, but that might not necessarily be true for long. Just last week, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes called to break up his former company in a New York Times op-ed.