A US cancellation rule was adopted, then undone in court

What was announced or recorded

The Federal Trade Commission's Negative Option Rule was published in the Federal Register on 15 November 2024, requiring, among other things, a 'click to cancel' mechanism letting a consumer end a recurring subscription as easily as they started it, with an effective date of 14 January 2025. On 8 July 2025 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit decided Custom Communications, Inc. v. FTC, vacating the 2024 rule. A further Federal Register document, published on 12 February 2026, restores the Negative Option Rule to the text it carried before the 2024 amendment.

What the documents establish

The Eighth Circuit's opinion holds that section 22 of the FTC Act required the Commission to issue a preliminary regulatory analysis once an administrative law judge found the rule's economic impact would exceed 100 million dollars, and that the Commission's failure to do so was not harmless error, so the court vacated the rule in full rather than only the click-to-cancel provision. The 2026 Federal Register document states plainly that the Commission is now acting 'in light of Federal court decisions vacating the Commission's final rules' and recodifies the pre-2024 negative-option text. Together the three documents establish a full cycle: adoption, a stated effective date, a procedural vacatur on cost-analysis grounds rather than a ruling on the merits of click-to-cancel itself, and a formal reversion.

Announced versus delivered

What was announced in 2024 was a rule; what was delivered, on this record, is a rule that never survived judicial review intact, vacated for a procedural failure in how it was written rather than because a court found the underlying cancellation idea unlawful. An app relying on auto-renewing coin plans should treat the current binding text as the pre-2024 negative-option rule, not the click-to-cancel amendments, unless a later document supersedes the 2026 reversion.

What to watch

Editorially, because the vacatur turned on a cost-benefit procedure rather than a substantive rejection of 'click to cancel', a future rulemaking that completes the required analysis could reintroduce a similar duty; whether the Commission attempts that is the signal to track rather than assuming the underlying policy question is closed.

• Which version of the Negative Option Rule is currently in force, the 2024 amendment or the restored pre-2024 text?
• Was a rule change vacated on procedural grounds or on the substance of the duty it created?
• Does an app's cancellation flow meet the rule actually in force today, rather than the one most recently announced?

A vacated rule is not the same as a rejected idea: the Eighth Circuit's opinion turned on the Commission's paperwork, not on whether subscribers should be able to cancel as easily as they sign up, which leaves the underlying question open rather than settled.