High Court Turns Away Price-Fixing Case Against Vegas Hotels

The US Supreme Court rejected a bid Monday to revive an algorithmic price-fixing case against several Las Vegas hotel-casinos.

Consumer plaintiffs asked the high court in March to review the Ninth Circuit’s ruling, which said that independent decisions of hotels to use the same algorithmic price-setting software didn’t amount to an illegal agreement because they were free to accept or reject price recommendations.

In 2023, the plaintiffs sued hotel-casinos including Caesars Entertainment Corp. and MGM Resorts International alleging their shared use of algorithms built by the Rainmaker Group, a Cendyn Group LLC subsidiary, violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act.

In 2024, Chief Judge Miranda M. Du of the US District Court for the District of Nevada dismissed the plaintiffs’ amended complaint with prejudice, saying the plaintiffs who stayed at various Vegas locations failed to plausibly allege a tacit agreement between the hotels to inflate room prices using an algorithm.

Last year, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the dismissal, saying there’s no conspiracy without an agreement.

The plaintiffs argued in their petition that the Ninth Circuit should have analyzed the total effect of the hotels’ independent agreements under the “rule of reason,” rather than evaluating whether there was a direct restraint of trade, the plaintiffs argued.

The rule of reason requires a detailed analysis of whether the alleged conduct harmed competition, not just whether there was an explicit agreement.

The appeal sought to clarify whether agreements between a common algorithmic pricing vendor and competing firms are “categorically exempt” from the rule of reason inquiry, the standard default under Section 1 of the Sherman Act.

Companies across industries have been grappling with dozens of price-fixing cases alleging that their collective use of the same price-setting software is anticompetitive.

The plaintiffs are represented by Hagens Berman Sobel Shapiro LLP. Cendyn is represented by Latham & Watkins LLP.

The case is Gibson v. Cendyn Grp. LLC, U.S., No. 25-1109, 4/20/26.