The Limits of Lina Khan's Power

The FTC’s new chair wants to curb Big Tech. Getting courts to agree won’t be easy

- David McLaughlin

The fiercest foes of America’s technology giants cheered when Lina Khan, a professor at Columbia Law School, was confirmed by the Senate on June 15 for a seat on the Federal Trade Commission. Then-President Joe Biden handed them a gift they could hardly believe: He was naming her chair of the antitrust agency.

“I am choked up,” tweeted Zephyr Teachout, a Fordham University law professor and author of the anti-monopoly book Break ’Em Up. “This means so much for workers, equality, community, democracy.”

The shock was understandable. Khan had been nominated in March to be a commissioner, not chair, and it was rumored that either the acting head of the agency, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, or Washington, D.C., Attorney General Karl Racine would soon be named to lead the commission.

Instead, hours after the Senate confirmed her, Biden put the 32-year-old Khan—one of the most prominent antagonists of big business—in charge of the agency, where she’ll be responsible for challenging mergers and taking on companies when they use their market muscle to snuff out competition.

Now comes the hard part: putting her ambitious agenda into action. The biggest hurdle, say antitrust experts, is a judiciary that’s made it very difficult for competition watchdogs to win ambitious cases. And to make any change of consequence, whether breaking up a monopoly or stopping a takeover, enforcers must prevail in court.