WASHINGTON—The Senate on Tuesday confirmed Lina Khan for a seat on the Federal Trade Commission, and the White House plans to tap her to lead the agency, a post that will allow her to pursue aggressive enforcement of U.S. antitrust and consumer-protection laws.
Ms. Khan, a 32-year-old Columbia University law professor who has been a vocal critic of powerful technology companies, was confirmed on a 69-28 vote. With her confirmation secured, President Biden now will designate her as FTC chairman, according to a person familiar with the decision.
Democratic Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter has been running the FTC on an acting basis.
Ms. Khan has been the leader of a progressive movement that favors far-reaching changes to antitrust enforcement, saying the current decadeslong approach has done too little to restrain corporate dominance and stop mergers that have eroded competition.
The Senate’s vote was bipartisan, with 21 Republicans voting for Ms. Khan at a time when many in the GOP say the government should do more to rein in dominant tech firms. Still, some Republicans have criticized her approach as too interventionist and potentially burdensome for other industries.
Ms. Khan has reserved her deepest criticisms for dominant tech companies, especially Amazon.com Inc., the subject of a widely read law-review article she wrote while at Yale Law School that argued that antitrust law has failed to restrain the online retailer.
She also served as a key staffer on a House antitrust panel that conducted a 16-month investigation of large online platforms and last year recommended that lawmakers take steps to rein them in.
Ms. Khan’s confirmation for now gives Democrats a 3-2 edge at the FTC, though another Democrat— Rohit Chopra —is likely on the way out, because President Biden has nominated him to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Mr. Chopra is awaiting a vote by the full Senate for that post, making it possible that the FTC will have only a limited time window to address any pending matters that might potentially divide the commission along partisan lines. It could take several months to get a successor for Mr. Chopra confirmed.
The White House has been slow to nominate a full cast of antitrust enforcers, creating uncertainty about the Biden administration’s approach to enforcing U.S. laws that are designed to promote and protect competition.
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The president hasn’t yet nominated anyone to run the Justice Department’s antitrust division, which shares authority with the FTC.
The FTC’s current commissioners act with consensus on an array of enforcement matters, but at times have split in deep and visible ways, including in last year’s antitrust lawsuit alleging unlawful monopolization by Facebook Inc. and a recent controversy over a convenience-store merger involving the 7-Eleven chain.
FTC Democrats have signaled they would like to take a tougher line on mergers and focus more enforcement attention on anticompetitive business conduct, including by issuing first-of-their kind regulations that would prohibit certain kinds of business practices as unfair methods of competition.
The commission for many months has been examining a variety of practices by Amazon. It is also possible the FTC could review the online giant’s proposed acquisition of Hollywood studio MGM.
Ms. Khan has faced questions about whether she would have to recuse herself in an FTC case against large technology companies because of her past work on the House antitrust investigation. She has said she would consult with FTC ethics officials if recusal questions arose.
—Alex Leary contributed to this article.
Write to Brent Kendall at [email protected]
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