Photo Credit: Capitol Hill by Andy Feliciotti
Secondary platforms battle against the District of Columbia’s RESALE Act, though DC is fighting back against an attempt at a preliminary injunction.
A coalition of secondary ticketing platforms have united to sue the District of Columbia over the RESALE Act, intensifying the situation in the nation’s capital. Now, the District of Columbia is defending its strict resale cap as it claps back against the ticketing platforms’ attempt at a preliminary injunction.
The Ticket Policy Forum and its members, SeatGeek, Vivid Seats, TickPick, and Gametime, sued last month to block DC’s new highly restrictive ticket resale law, the Restricting Egregious Scalping Against Live Entertainment (RESALE) Act, calling it unconstitutional. The RESALE Act limits secondary ticket prices to no more than 10% above face value and is scheduled to become enforceable in 2027.
The ticketers argue that a 10% price cap would force them to operate at a loss and raise consumer prices by driving ticket sales to the black market instead. They ask for a judge to issue an immediate injunction to bar enforcement of the law. But the DC Attorney General’s Office said in a response brief filed on Monday that doing so would be unfair and unnecessary.
“The will of the people plus their interests in protecting consumers and a vital, cultural industry far outweigh the pecuniary interests of a handful of corporations,” the brief reads. “Plaintiffs include multi-billion-dollar companies that can easily absorb any hypothesized losses from complying with one city’s law while litigation proceeds. Plaintiffs may later be able to recover those losses, but the harms to the district and its people from a preliminary injunction are truly irreparable.”
DC’s attorneys assert that the resale cap was properly enacted after residents became “fed up” with increasing ticket prices, and the bill “sailed through” both local government and congressional approval while ticketing platforms lobbied to stop it.
“Striking out with the democratic process, Plaintiffs dressed their policy objections up in constitutional garb and turned to this court for a judicial veto,” their brief continues.
Further, the District of Columbia says there is no merit to the ticketers’ claims that the law is unconstitutional, despite the companies’ argument that a portion of the law runs counter to First Amendment protections. Specifically, the ticketers argue that the requirement to list a ticket’s original, face-value cost next to the resale rate is unlawful “compelled speech.”
The district’s attorneys counter that “the original ticket price is hardly irrelevant to a consumer—without it, the consumer cannot fully understand the value of the resold ticket and make an informed decision about whether to buy it.”
A hearing on the ticketing platforms’ injunction motion is scheduled for November 19.