In his battles with Big Tech, District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine sees his office as something of an underdog.
“In a real way, when you take on tech, it’s David versus Goliath,” Racine said in a recent interview with CNBC in his office. “Which means you’ve got to be thorough, studied and precise. And willing to go the distance.”
Racine, who is now in his last year of office after announcing he will not seek reelection, has demonstrated his resolve in lawsuits he’s brought against companies including Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Grubhub. Still, his office has seen significant blows to several different actions against Amazon and Facebook owner Meta in recent months.
A US court dismissed a lawsuit against Amazon.com Inc on Friday March 20th that accused the company of antitrust violations for barring third-party sellers from offering better deals for their products elsewhere. The suit had been presented a year earlier by Racine.
Racine has now also joined the attorneys general of Texas, Washington and Indiana in a suit alleging that search giant Google made misleading promises about how much privacy it could guarantee users dating back to at least 2014.
Racine said his office plans to move ahead with those cases and others, and will ask the courts to reconsider. He said he’s not surprised that the tech companies would hire the most experienced lawyers to back them up and engage in a process that “grinds down smaller players and plaintiffs.”
And, he said, he has faith that the courts, with a little bit of extra explanation on the particulars of their cases, will come around.
“We are willing to take on that David role,” Racine said. “And after all, I think, David won.”
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