Sponsors (2)
Introduced March 27, 2025 by Laura Friedman · Last progress March 27, 2025
This bill reduces exploitative post-disaster price spikes and strengthens enforcement/remedies for affected communities, but may constrain businesses facing real added costs, leave protection gaps when short windows expire, and provide limited deterrence against large repeat offenders.
People in disaster-declared areas — especially low-income residents, renters, and homeowners — face capped price increases for essentials, lodging, and rentals for the first 30 days and capped repair/reconstruction markups for 180 days, reducing exploitative spikes and lowering out-of-pocket recovery costs.
FTC enforcement authority is clarified and civil penalties are directed into a fund to assist affected communities, increasing accountability and providing dedicated resources for disaster recovery.
Victims of overcharging can obtain refunds or damages through private lawsuits and state attorney-general parens patriae actions, improving consumer remedies and creating stronger deterrence against price-gouging.
Businesses facing real added costs (higher supply, labor, tariffs) may be unable to pass those costs on because of the 10% cap, risking reduced availability of goods/services or reluctance by sellers to operate in declared areas.
The short 30-day window for many price protections may expire long before recovery is complete, leaving low-income households, renters, and homeowners exposed to price spikes later in the recovery period.
Civil penalties (per-violation and aggregate caps such as $25,000) may be too low to deter large-scale or repeat offenders, limiting the law’s effectiveness against well-resourced firms.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Prohibits excessive price increases in declared disaster/emergency areas for essentials, lodging, rentals, and repair services for set periods, with limited exceptions and FTC/state enforcement.
Prohibits large price increases for essential consumer goods and services, hotel lodging, residential rentals, and disaster repair services inside areas covered by a Presidential disaster or emergency declaration. For most goods and services the bill caps post-declaration price increases at 10% above the pre-declaration price for defined short periods (30 days for essentials/lodging/rentals; 180 days for repair/reconstruction), limits one-time opportunistic markups, and allows narrow exceptions for legitimately higher supplier or material costs. Enforcement is handled by the Federal Trade Commission under its existing unfair-or-deceptive-practices authority, and state attorneys general may bring parens patriae civil actions (with notice to the FTC) to stop violations and seek damages, restitution, or injunctions.