New Jersey's top lawyer, Attorney General Jennifer Davenport, sued Amazon on August 4, 2026, in federal court. She accused the company of unfairly using its power as the only buyer of delivery services from its contracted delivery companies to keep driver wages low and limit workers' ability to unionize. The complaint was published by the New Jersey AG's office NJOAG, which describes it as the first lawsuit of its kind filed by a U.S. state Engadget. Reuters confirmed the filing through court records Reuters.

The lawsuit focuses on Amazon's Delivery Service Partner (DSP) program, which the company started in 2018. Under the program, small delivery companies contract with Amazon to deliver packages, and those companies hire their own drivers. Amazon calls these companies independent businesses. The complaint argues that because Amazon is effectively the only company buying DSP delivery services, the contractors have nowhere else to go. When one buyer dominates a market for labor or services, economists call that a monopsony — the flip side of a monopoly, where one seller dominates. The AG's press release states Amazon can maintain its anticompetitive environment because it is the dominant purchaser of labor for DSP delivery services NJOAG.

CNBC reported that the complaint alleges Amazon's third-party delivery model leads to lower wages, unfair working conditions, and a lack of competition CNBC. DSP drivers earn significantly less than workers at the U.S. Postal Service, UPS, and FedEx, according to the complaint Engadget.

The lawsuit also alleges that Amazon actively prevents DSP drivers from unionizing and limits competition for labor among contractors in its delivery network. The complaint claims Amazon controls DSPs' hiring practices. Specifically, some workers who supported union organizing at an Amazon delivery station were later rejected or terminated by other DSPs within Amazon's network Engadget.

Amazon spokesperson Steve Kelly denied the complaint's claims, stating that DSPs are independent business owners who make their own decisions about hiring, fleet management, and capacity planning Engadget. Quartz reported that the lawsuit was filed as a federal antitrust action Quartz.

The legal idea behind this case is unusual. Monopsony claims in U.S. antitrust law have historically been rarer than monopoly claims, in part because proving that a buyer holds dominant purchasing power in a defined labor or services market is factually demanding. The complaint's framing of Amazon as the sole purchaser of DSP services, combined with allegations that the company controls hiring decisions at the contractor companies, is designed to establish that Amazon's purchasing power directly shapes working conditions for drivers it technically does not employ. If the court accepts the market definition, the case could establish a precedent for applying monopsony doctrine to situations where a single company runs a large workforce of contractors without directly hiring them.

The independent-contractor classification that underpins the DSP program is central to the dispute. Amazon launched the program in 2018 to grow its delivery capacity without taking on the obligations of a direct employer. The complaint alleges that despite calling DSPs independent operators, Amazon exercises enough control over their operations — particularly hiring — that the independence is largely on paper. Amazon's public position, as articulated by Kelly, maintains that DSPs retain genuine operational autonomy.

The allegation that pro-union workers were rejected or terminated by other DSPs in Amazon's network is among the most pointed claims in the complaint. If supported by evidence, it would suggest that Amazon's influence over DSP hiring extends to suppressing specific worker organizing activity, which would carry implications beyond antitrust law and into labor-rights territory.

The broader context here is that the outcome could influence how other states approach labor models that rely on contractor networks. The AG's office has positioned this as a first-of-its-kind state monopsony complaint, and the legal theory, if it survives early challenges, may provide a template for similar actions elsewhere. The gap the complaint identifies between DSP driver compensation and wages at USPS, UPS, and FedEx is the kind of concrete, comparative metric that gives a monopsony claim traction, because it suggests that workers in a comparable logistics role earn less when a single buyer controls the labor market.

Amazon will likely contest both the market definition and the degree of control it exercises over DSP operations. The company has prevailed in previous disputes over its classification of delivery workers, though those cases typically addressed employment status rather than antitrust monopsony doctrine. This case operates on different legal terrain, and the distinction matters: a finding that Amazon is a monopsonist in the DSP services market would not necessarily reclassify drivers as employees, but it could constrain how Amazon structures its relationships with delivery contractors going forward.