HALELUYA HADERO

The Federal Trade Commission asked a federal judge on Wednesday to delay a trial in a case of using deceptive practices in its Prime subscription program, citing staffing and budgetary challenges at the government agency.

Jonathan Cohen, a lawyer for the FTC, made the request before U.S. District Judge John Chun, who is overseeing the legal proceedings from a 2023 lawsuit the commission filed against the e-commerce giant in Washington state.

“Our resource constraints are severe and really unique to this moment,” Cohen said during a status hearing on Wednesday. “We have lost employees in the agency, in our division and on the case team.”

When the judge asked if the agency’s challenges were due to recent cuts in the federal government, Cohen said it was, adding that some employees chose to leave the FTC following the sent by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency in January. Staff members who resigned also have not been replaced due to a government hiring freeze, he said.

The Amazon trial had been scheduled to start in September. The FTC is seeking to relax some of the deadlines in the case and a delay akin to a two-month continuance. The agency does not want to “move the trial back more than a couple of months,” Cohen said.