‘Click To Cancel’ Bills In Congress Target Consumer Subscriptions That Are Hard To Ditch

Lawmakers are advancing several “click to cancel” bills that would force subscription services to make cancellation at least as easy as signing up and to get clear consent before charging after free trials.

What the new bills do

• A bipartisan House bill called the Unsubscribe Act was introduced in mid‑January 2026 to require simple online cancellation, clear disclosures, and opt‑in consent before charging customers once a free or discounted trial ends.

• The Unsubscribe Act is designed to mirror and reinforce an earlier Federal Trade Commission (FTC) “click‑to‑cancel” rule that courts blocked on procedural grounds in 2025, rather than on the substance of the protections.

Connection to the FTC rule

• The FTC finalized a nationwide “click‑to‑cancel” rule for negative‑option offers (like subscriptions and auto‑renewals) that would have required an easy, straightforward way to cancel and banned misleading practices around sign‑ups and renewals.

• Just days before the rule was to be enforced in July 2025, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated it over technical and economic‑analysis issues, prompting members of Congress to file legislation to give the same protections the force of statute instead of relying only on FTC rulemaking.

Why this matters for consumers

• Consumer groups say “subscription traps” can cost households around 200 dollars a year in unwanted fees, often because cancelling requires phone calls, long hold times, or hidden options instead of a simple online button.

• If these bills pass, companies offering subscriptions in the U.S. would generally have to provide a clearly visible online cancellation path, honor cancellations quickly, and secure explicit permission before converting free or discounted trials into full‑price recurring charges.

H.R. 4819, the Click to Cancel Act of 2025, is currently only at the Introduced stage and has not advanced beyond referral to committee.​

Status in Congress

• The bill was introduced in the House by Rep. Brad Sherman (D‑CA‑32) on July 29, 2025.

• On the same day it was referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and its official tracker on Congress.gov still lists the status as “Introduced,” with no recorded hearings, markups, or floor votes yet.​

What the bill is intended to do

• The proposal would write the FTC’s previously finalized “Click‑to‑Cancel” negative‑option rule into federal statute, restoring and solidifying requirements for simple online cancellation of subscriptions and auto‑renewals.​

• It would require companies to provide an easy cancellation mechanism, obtain clear and informed consent before auto‑renewal, and clearly disclose key terms before taking billing information.​

The Eighth Circuit vacated the FTC’s Click to Cancel rule on procedural grounds, finding that the FTC failed to perform a required preliminary cost‑benefit regulatory analysis before finalizing the rule, which made the entire rule invalid.

Key procedural defect

• Under Section 22 of the FTC Act, if a rule is expected to have an annual effect on the economy of 100 million dollars or more, the FTC must prepare a preliminary regulatory analysis (costs, benefits, and alternatives) and expose it to public comment.

• An FTC administrative law judge later found the Click to Cancel rule would exceed that 100 million dollar threshold, but the Commission still did not issue a separate preliminary analysis and instead went straight to a final regulatory analysis with the final rule.

Why that led to vacating the rule

• The court held that skipping the preliminary analysis was a “fatal” procedural error because it deprived businesses and other stakeholders of a meaningful chance to comment on the agency’s cost‑benefit assumptions and potential less‑burdensome alternatives.

• The panel rejected the FTC’s argument that this was harmless error and warned that allowing such shortcuts could enable future manipulation of the rulemaking process, so it vacated (wiped out) the rule in its entirety without reaching the challengers’ other arguments about the FTC’s authority or the rule’s substance.