New Jersey’s Amazon Complaint Shows Worker Surveillance and Monopsony Are One Legal Problem

New Jersey’s antitrust case against Amazon connects the power to supervise workers with the power to limit their alternatives. On October 1, MLex reported that the state filed a less-redacted version of its complaint alleging suppression of delivery drivers’ pay. The suit began August 4. The Attorney General calls it the first monopsony conduct complaint brought by a state.[1]

California has now addressed both forms of power through legislation. Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 1776 and AB 1883 on September 30. The first expressly protects competition for workers. The second restricts specified uses of artificial intelligence in workplace surveillance. Both take effect January 1, 2027.[2] Together with New Jersey’s allegations, they support an argument for treating worker surveillance and labor-market power as connected mechanisms of control.

A monopsonist possesses market power as a buyer. In a labor market, the concern is an employer’s ability to hold compensation below competitive levels because workers lack adequate alternatives. New Jersey’s theory reaches through the Delivery Service Partners (DSPs) that employ drivers. The state alleges that Amazon constrains the contractors’ independence and their competition for labor.[3]

According to the Attorney General’s account, Amazon controls route allocations and performance requirements while monitoring drivers through AI and vehicle cameras. The state also alleges restrictions on contractors hiring one another’s drivers. Some workers who supported organizing were allegedly rejected or terminated by other DSPs. These allegations describe a connection between supervision within a job and access to another job. They remain allegations rather than judicial findings.[4]

That connection matters because information acquires practical force through the decisions it enables. A route metric can help a business coordinate deliveries. When the entity collecting that metric also influences continued access to work, the measurement becomes part of its authority over the worker. Restrictions on competing job offers can make that authority harder to resist. On the state’s theory, monitoring and constrained mobility reinforce each other.

Amazon disputes the factual premise. Its spokesperson told Reuters that DSPs manage drivers’ workdays and route execution while drivers remain free to choose employers and associate. Amazon’s own program description also credits vehicle cameras with improving safety.[5] These positions identify factual questions that matter. The legal analysis must distinguish useful coordination from practices that impair competition and must examine what workers can actually do when they disagree with an assessment.

The monopsonization theory faces a separate market-definition problem. In Queen City Pizza, the Third Circuit rejected a franchise-defined market where supplies were interchangeable with outside products and the asserted dependence arose from disclosed contractual restrictions.[6] That holding does not resolve New Jersey’s case. It does require care in moving from control within a contractual network to power in an economic market. The state must establish why realistic employment alternatives fail to constrain Amazon and how the challenged practices impair competition. Close supervision alone cannot supply that proof.

California’s AB 1776 makes the relationship between competition and worker choice explicit. New Business and Professions Code section 16730(b) expressly protects competition among businesses for workers against anticompetitive practices that impede workers’ freedom to choose employment. Section 16731 adds an express prohibition on monopsonization. It requires substantial market power and reserves actions under that new section to the Attorney General or a district attorney.[7] The enactment supplies an additional public enforcement tool with its own requirements.

Its focus on employment choice also gives the inquiry a useful direction. Counting contractors says little about competition if another firm constrains their ability to recruit or retain workers. The relevant investigation should examine which entities can make competing offers and whether workers can accept them without losing access to the network. Economic independence requires practical room to compete.

AB 1883 addresses a different part of that relationship. Chapter 853 adds Labor Code sections 1580 through 1583. Subject to exceptions, it prohibits AI workplace surveillance used to recognize or infer employees’ emotional states or collect neural data. Neural data means information generated by measuring nervous-system activity and excludes information inferred from nonneural sources.[8]

The statute contains no employee-consent exception. Its premise is that certain uses warrant substantive limits. Its employer definition also reaches entities exercising indirect control over wages, hours or working conditions and specified labor-contracting relationships. This makes actual control relevant to coverage. It does not decide Amazon’s status.

The limits are material. Section 1581(b) preserves surveillance used “to ensure safety.” Section 1583 provides a narrower exemption for specified federally governed operations. Ordinary route tracking does not automatically fall within the prohibition. Newsom’s signing message acknowledges unclear definitions and calls for legislative refinement.[9] The California enactment does not establish that the practices alleged in New Jersey violate California surveillance law.

The conceptual lesson is broader than either cause of action. A consent-centered approach asks whether a person accepted a data practice. A competition inquiry asks what alternatives constrain the business imposing it. In employment, the strength of those alternatives affects the practical significance of consent. A worker who needs the job may understand a monitoring policy completely while having little influence over its terms.

Conversely, an employment market offering several jobs can still expose workers to intrusive monitoring. The ability to change employers supplies only part of a protection against demands for intimate information. AB 1883 recognizes a basis for limiting specified uses without making a worker prove that the employer dominates a market. Competition and substantive privacy protections address different conditions of meaningful choice.

For lawyers and technology executives, the implication is to examine the relationship between the information collected and the authority exercised through it. A review should trace how a performance score affects discipline or continued eligibility for work. It should identify who can reverse the decision and whether its consequences follow a worker to another contractor. It should also test whether hiring restrictions prevent competing employers from offering better terms. Those questions connect system design to the distribution of bargaining power.

The same reasoning should inform remedies. If hiring restrictions unlawfully suppress competition, relief should restore employers’ ability to make competing offers. If prohibited surveillance supplies information used in employment decisions, a revised notice cannot cure the prohibited use. Where monitoring helps enforce exclusion from a labor network, relief should address the decision process through which the exclusion occurs. Each remedy requires proof of the corresponding violation.

Worker freedom depends on the terms under which people can remain employed as well as their capacity to leave. New Jersey’s allegations make those two dimensions visible within one delivery system. California’s enactments give each dimension express legal attention. The next step should be to evaluate them together, with attention to who sets the conditions of work and how workers can contest that authority.

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[1]   MLex, New Jersey Files Public Version of Antitrust Complaint Against Amazon (Oct. 1, 2026) (reporting the less-redacted filing). N.J. Off. of Att’y Gen., AG Davenport Sues Amazon Over Anticompetitive Practices Affecting DSP Delivery Drivers (Aug. 4, 2026) [hereinafter NJ Announcement] (announcing the suit and describing its asserted first-state status).

[2]   2026 Cal. Stat. ch. 826, §§ 1–3 (A.B. 1776) (adding competition protections). 2026 Cal. Stat. ch. 853, § 1 (A.B. 1883) (restricting specified surveillance). Cal. Gov’t Code § 9600(a) (prescribing ordinary statutory effective dates).

[3]   Nat’l Ass’n of Att’ys Gen., New Jersey v. Amazon.com, Inc., et al. (2026) (describing alleged monopsony in DSP services and driver labor).

[4]   NJ Announcement, supra note 1 (describing monitoring and restrictions on hiring).

[5]   Jody Godoy, New Jersey Sues Amazon Alleging Poor Pay and Conditions for Drivers, Reuters (Aug. 4, 2026) (reporting Amazon’s denial). Amazon, Everything You Need to Know About Amazon’s Delivery Service Partner (DSP) Program (last visited Oct. 2, 2026) (describing contractor independence and camera safety benefits).

[6]   Queen City Pizza, Inc. v. Domino’s Pizza, Inc., 124 F.3d 430, 440–41, 443 (3d Cir. 1997) (rejecting the asserted market and distinguishing contractual dependence from market power).

[7]   2026 Cal. Stat. ch. 826, §§ 1–2 (adding Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code §§ 16730(b), 16731(a), (c), (f) and specifying protections and enforcement requirements).

[8]   2026 Cal. Stat. ch. 853, § 1 (adding Cal. Lab. Code §§ 1580(d)–(e), 1581(a) and defining coverage and prohibited uses).

[9]   2026 Cal. Stat. ch. 853, § 1 (adding Cal. Lab. Code §§ 1581(b), 1583 and providing exceptions). Gavin Newsom, Signing Message for AB 1883 (Sept. 30, 2026) (identifying ambiguities and requesting clarification).