California accuses Amazon of pressuring Walmart and rivals to raise prices

California has accused Amazon of leaning on vendors to raise prices on Walmart and other rival sites, a fight that can land on the front line of retail: price checks, shopper complaints and the daily pressure to explain why the same item costs more somewhere else.

The state first sued Amazon on September 14, 2022, in San Francisco Superior Court, saying Amazon.com Services LLC violated California’s Unfair Competition Law and Cartwright Act through price-parity and anti-price-competition practices. In April 2026, the California Department of Justice released newly unredacted evidence from discovery and pushed for a preliminary injunction, saying Amazon used its bargaining power to demand that vendors “fix,” “correct,” “increase,” or “raise” prices on competing sites, including Walmart, Target, Home Depot, Chewy and Best Buy.

The filing says Amazon threatened consequences if merchants did not go along, including ad and promo restrictions, compensation demands, loss of the Buy Box and removal or suspension from Amazon. California says the alleged conduct reached everyday goods across home decor, garden products, pet care and apparel, the kind of inventory that can spark immediate customer comparisons when a shopper sees a lower online price at one store and a higher one at another.

Two examples put numbers behind the dispute. California says Amazon wanted Levi’s Easy Khaki Classic pants priced at $29.99 on Walmart after Walmart had lowered them to about $25.47 to $26.99. In another example, the state says Amazon sought a Walmart price of $16.99 for eye drops instead of $13.59. California also says Amazon complained about lower fertilizer prices and prompted Home Depot to agree “to raise the prices this time.”

For Walmart associates and managers, the practical effect is not legal theory but floor-level friction. These are the kinds of price gaps that can trigger customer questions at the register, online pickup complaints and renewed scrutiny of Walmart’s everyday-low-price message, especially when shoppers are comparing Walmart to Amazon in real time. Walmart said it does not comment on litigation in which it is not a party and that it works to keep prices low for customers.

Amazon called California’s motion a “transparent attempt” to distract from what it said was the weakness of the state’s case and said it remains “America’s lowest-priced online retailer.” California says Amazon has more than 160 million Prime members nationwide and around 25 million customers in California, a scale that gives the dispute broad reach as the case heads toward a January 2027 trial.