Update: American Express has acknowledged that the Antitrust Division is investigating its ant-steering rules, which prohibit merchants from steering customers to other means of payment or charging more to use an AmEx card that is charged to use other cards.
American Express was originally a defendant in the nationwide merchant class action challenging credit card merchant rules. That case, however, has focused on the lack of competition among Visa and MasterCard issuers on interchange fees, and AmEx was thus dropped from the amended complaint. Last June, a group of drug stores filed separate complaints against AmEx relating to rules prohibiting merchants accepting AmEx cards from steering their customers to less expensive means of payment. The plaintiffs argued that the issues were sufficiently related to the larger case to support consolidation. Although the class action includes similar claims against MasterCard and Visa issuers, the judge handling the larger class action found insufficient similarity in the claims. The cases against AmEx have thus been separately consolidated.