The Non-Financial Ledger: What This Actually Felt Like

You are standing at a checkout counter. The cashier rings up your groceries. You reach for your debit card. You have no idea that the store you are standing in signed a contract with American Express that, according to this lawsuit, contained rules preventing that cashier from saying, “Hey, if you use a different card, this costs us less money.” You were never supposed to know that conversation was forbidden. The price you paid already had those fees baked in.

This is how the anti-steering rules worked in practice. Merchants absorbed the cost of accepting American Express cards. Those merchants could not, under the terms American Express set, steer you toward a payment method that would have cost less to process. So they did what businesses do: they passed the cost on. It ended up in your prices. You paid it every time you bought groceries at Kroger, grabbed medication at CVS, or replaced your dryer at Best Buy. You just never saw it as a line item.

The people named as class representatives in this case are not hedge fund managers disputing a basis point. They are people with names like David Moskowitz, Ricky Amaro, Angela Clark, Wyatt Cooper, Emily Counts, Allie Stewart, and Debbie Tingle. They shopped at the same stores you shop at. They filed suit in 2019 and spent six years in federal court watching this case get argued, appealed, and mediated. They finally got a jury verdict in August 2025. Then, two months later, settlement negotiations began again.

What makes this particularly difficult to sit with is the finality clause buried in the settlement terms. Every class member who does not actively opt out is permanently and forever barred from bringing any future claim against American Express related to these facts. That includes claims they do not even know they have yet. The settlement explicitly waives California Civil Code Section 1542, the law designed to protect people from releasing claims they are unaware of. The settlement was designed to close every door, in every state, for all time.

And the jury verdict from August 28, 2025? The agreement requires it to be vacated, erased, and declared of “no force or effect for all purposes, including collateral estoppel or other preclusive purposes.” It cannot be used in future cases. It cannot be cited. It legally never happened. Six years of litigation, a full trial, and a jury decision: all of it traded for $17.5 million split among potentially millions of people, minus lawyers’ fees, minus administrative costs, minus taxes.

The retailers who accepted these rules and passed costs onto their customers are not defendants here. They are listed as merchant data points. The people who actually absorbed the cost, the non-rewards card users and debit card users who had no idea any of this was happening, are the class. They get to file a form. They might get a check. American Express gets to say it did nothing wrong.

Legal Receipts: What the Documents Actually Say

These are direct quotations from the settlement agreement filed January 23, 2026, in the Eastern District of New York. Nothing has been paraphrased.

“the Court has approved the Settlement as described herein, following notice to the Classes and a hearing, as prescribed by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23, and entered the Judgment, and the Judgment has become Final, or the Court has entered an Alternate Judgment and none of the Parties seek to terminate the Settlement…” Stipulation ¶36(e) — Conditions of Settlement

“the Final judgment does not state that the jury verdict entered August 28, 2025 (ECF No. 383) is vacated and of no force or effect for all purposes, including collateral estoppel or other preclusive purposes.” Stipulation ¶1(b) — Definition of Alternate Judgment

“Any Class Member who or which fails to timely submit a valid Claim Form will not be entitled to receive any of the proceeds from the Net Settlement Fund but will otherwise be bound by all of the terms of this Stipulation and the Settlement… and will be permanently barred and enjoined from bringing any action, claim, or other proceeding of any kind against Defendants or any of the other Released Parties with respect to the Releasing Claims.” Stipulation ¶28 — Notice and Settlement Administration

“This Stipulation… shall not: be offered against Defendants as evidence of, or construed as, or deemed to be evidence of any presumption, concession, or admission by Defendants with respect to the truth of any fact alleged by Plaintiffs or the validity of any claim that was or could have been asserted or the deficiency of any defense that has been or could have been asserted in this Action, or of any liability, negligence, fault, or other wrongdoing of any kind of Defendants.” Stipulation ¶41(a) — No Admission of Wrongdoing

“The Releasing Parties shall expressly be deemed to have waived… Section 1542 of the California Civil Code… A GENERAL RELEASE DOES NOT EXTEND TO CLAIMS THAT THE CREDITOR OR RELEASING PARTY DOES NOT KNOW OR SUSPECT TO EXIST IN HIS OR HER FAVOR AT THE TIME OF EXECUTING THE RELEASE AND THAT, IF KNOWN BY HIM OR HER, WOULD HAVE MATERIALLY AFFECTED HIS OR HER SETTLEMENT WITH THE DEBTOR OR RELEASED PARTY.” Stipulation ¶1(oo) — Definition of Unknown Claims; California Civil Code §1542

Societal Impact Mapping: Who Got Hurt and How

Public Health

The settlement’s class definitions specifically carve out one narrow exception: prescription drug copay purchases are excluded, but only flat-copay transactions. This exclusion itself reveals the reach of the conduct being settled.

• Pharmacy purchases at CVS, Walgreens, and Rite Aid are included in the merchant list. These are stores where people fill prescriptions, buy over-the-counter medication, and manage chronic conditions on a budget. If anti-steering rules inflated the cost of processing transactions at these locations, the downstream effect landed on people managing health costs, one of the most financially vulnerable categories of household spending.
• Low-income households disproportionately use debit cards rather than rewards credit cards, because debit cards do not require good credit and do not carry annual fees. The certified Debit Card Classes are the payment-method equivalent of the lowest-income tier of cardholders. Those are the people the anti-steering rules hit hardest, through higher retail prices, with no rewards points to offset the cost.
• Non-rewards credit card users also represent people who either cannot qualify for premium cards or choose basic cards because they cannot afford to carry balances on high-interest rewards products. The settlement’s focus on these two card types confirms the harm concentrated at the economic bottom of the cardholder spectrum.

Economic Inequality

The structure of this settlement illustrates how corporate misconduct settlements systematically transfer value upward while distributing pennies downward.

• The certified merchant list includes Walmart, Target, Kroger, Albertsons, Safeway, Publix, Meijer, Hy-Vee, and other grocery chains where working-class families spend a significant portion of their household income. If every purchase at these stores carried embedded processing costs that anti-steering rules kept artificially high, the cumulative impact across millions of transactions over years represents a substantial transfer of wealth from everyday shoppers to American Express’s fee structure.
• American Express is represented in this case by Cravath, Swaine & Moore, one of the most expensive law firms in the United States. The plaintiffs’ side engaged a coalition of ten or more law firms across multiple states. All legal fees on both sides ultimately trace back to one source: American Express’s $17.5 million payment. The money flows from the settlement fund, meaning class members’ compensation funds the legal industry that processed their case.
• The “no reversion” clause in ¶17 means unclaimed funds do not go back to American Express. In practice, unclaimed settlement funds in class actions often go to cy-pres recipients, which are charities or organizations designated by the court. This means the money intended for injured class members may end up benefiting third parties who suffered no harm from the conduct at issue, further diluting actual compensation to actual victims.
• The geographic scope of the certified classes is telling: Alabama, District of Columbia, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Utah, and Illinois for Debit Card Classes; DC, Kansas, and Illinois for Non-Rewards Credit Card Classes. Several of these states have median household incomes below the national average. The harm was concentrated in economically vulnerable communities precisely because those communities are the ones who rely on debit and basic credit cards.
• The settlement permits the jury verdict of August 28, 2025, to be vacated. That verdict represented the first time a jury assessed American Express’s anti-steering conduct and found it legally actionable. Erasing it removes a precedent that could have made future antitrust cases against payment networks significantly easier to win, preserving the structural advantage that allows fee inflation to continue unchallenged.

The “Cost of a Life” Metric: What $17.5 Million Looks Like in Human Terms

The Fine Print That Changes Everything: How This Settlement Actually Works

The settlement’s mechanics are designed to minimize American Express’s exposure while maximizing the finality of the release. Every structural detail below is drawn directly from the filed documents.

The Classes: Who Is (and Is Not) Covered

• The certified Debit Card Classes cover purchasers in Alabama, District of Columbia, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Utah, and Illinois. The Non-Rewards Credit Card Classes cover District of Columbia, Kansas, and Illinois. If you live outside these jurisdictions, you are not in the class regardless of where you shopped.
• Excluded from all classes: American Express credit or charge card holders (including co-branded Amex cards), card-not-present purchases (online or telephone orders), and purchases of prescription drugs or medical services paid as a flat insurance copay. The class is specifically and narrowly limited to in-person, non-Amex, non-copay transactions at the listed merchants.
• The merchant list covers 50 retail corporations operating over 100 store banners. To be eligible, a class member must have made a qualifying purchase at one of these specific retailers during the applicable class period using a qualifying debit or non-rewards credit card.

The Opt-Out: It Already Happened

• The settlement document states that “the Classes have already been provided an opportunity to opt out” as of January 24, 2025. The opt-out period closed before this settlement was even negotiated. Class members who wanted to preserve their right to sue independently and missed the 2025 opt-out window cannot do so now.
• This means the current choice for most class members is binary: file a claim form and receive a share of the net fund, or do nothing and still be permanently bound by the release while receiving nothing.

The Verdict Erasure Condition

• The settlement defines an “Alternate Judgment” as one that must state “the jury verdict entered August 28, 2025 (ECF No. 383) is vacated and of no force or effect for all purposes, including collateral estoppel or other preclusive purposes.” Any final judgment that does not vacate the verdict is explicitly defined as materially different from what American Express agreed to accept, giving them grounds to terminate.
• This means vacating the jury verdict was not an incidental byproduct of settlement. It was a defined, non-negotiable term. American Express’s lawyers at Cravath made it a structural requirement of the deal.

The Non-Disparagement Clause

• Paragraph 42 requires all parties to refrain from “negative, disparaging, or defamatory statements regarding any Party in public statements made in connection with the Settlement.” Paragraph 43 requires consent from both plaintiffs and defendants before any press releases or public statements about the case are issued.
• Plaintiffs’ lawyers and named plaintiffs are contractually muzzled from publicly criticizing American Express in connection with this settlement. The only permitted public response to a press inquiry is described in the document as confirming the settlement has been reached.

What Now: Who to Watch, What to Do, and Where to Push

American Express’s legal team at Cravath, Swaine & Moore secured a deal that erases a jury verdict and permanently silences millions of potential claimants. That means the pressure has to come from outside the courtroom.

Leadership on Record

• American Express Company: Defendant entity. Represented in settlement by Kevin J. Orsini, Helam Gebremariam, David H. Korn, and Rebecca Schindel of Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP, 375 Ninth Avenue, New York, NY 10001.
• American Express Travel Related Services Company, Inc.: Co-defendant entity. Same legal representation as above.
• Specific board members and executive officers are [REDACTED – Not in Source]. The source document does not name individual executives.

Watchlist: Regulatory Bodies With Jurisdiction Over This Conduct

• Department of Justice (DOJ) Antitrust Division: Anti-steering rules in payment card networks are a documented area of DOJ scrutiny. The DOJ previously litigated against American Express over similar conduct (Ohio v. American Express, which went to the Supreme Court in 2018). The settlement’s erasure of the jury verdict limits but does not eliminate the DOJ’s independent authority to investigate ongoing market practices.
• Federal Trade Commission (FTC): The FTC holds authority over unfair or deceptive practices in commerce. If anti-steering rules inflate consumer prices through hidden fee pass-through, that is within the FTC’s mandate to investigate even after a private class action settles.
• Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB): The CFPB has jurisdiction over payment card practices and consumer financial products. Debit card users, who form one of the two primary certified classes here, fall directly within the CFPB’s consumer protection mandate.
• State Attorneys General: The certified classes span multiple states. State AG offices in Alabama, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Utah, and the District of Columbia each have independent consumer protection authority and are not bound by the terms of this private settlement.

What You Can Do Right Now

• File a claim form if you are eligible. If you made qualifying in-person debit or non-rewards credit card purchases at any of the listed merchants in the covered states during the applicable class periods, monitor the settlement administration at ClassAction.org and file before the deadline. Not filing means losing both the money and your legal rights.
• Contact your state Attorney General. State AGs are not bound by this settlement’s non-disparagement clause or its release provisions. A high volume of constituent complaints about payment card anti-steering practices gives AG offices political incentive to open independent investigations. Find your AG at naag.org.
• Submit a complaint to the CFPB. The CFPB’s complaint database is public and informs regulatory priorities. File at cfpb.gov/complaint. Reference anti-steering practices in payment card network rules as the subject.
• Support merchants who fight back. Small and independent merchants who accept card payments bear the operational cost of anti-steering rules. Patronizing businesses that publicly advocate for payment card reform and merchant rights is a direct economic action against the fee structure that funds these practices.
• Organize locally around payment equity. Community organizations, credit unions, and local business associations in lower-income communities are the most directly affected by payment network fee structures. Connecting with groups already working on financial equity in your city, particularly those focused on unbanked and underbanked populations, builds the grassroots infrastructure that makes future regulatory action politically viable.
• Demand Congressional scrutiny of the Payment Card Network Duopoly. The American Express case is one data point in a broader pattern of market concentration in payment processing. Contact your Congressional representatives about the Credit Card Competition Act or similar legislation designed to introduce competition into card routing. The Senate Banking Committee and House Financial Services Committee have jurisdiction.