Julie Brill, Commissioner
Julie Brill was sworn in as a Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission April 6, 2010, to a term that expires on September 25, 2016.
Prior to becoming a Commissioner, Ms. Brill was the Senior Deputy Attorney General and Chief of Consumer Protection and Antitrust for the North Carolina Department of Justice, a position she held from February 2009 to April 2010. Commissioner Brill has also been a Lecturer-in-Law at Columbia University’s School of Law. Before serving as Chief of Consumer Protection and Antitrust in North Carolina, Commissioner Brill served as an Assistant Attorney General for Consumer Protection and Antitrust for the State of Vermont for over 20 years, from 1988 to 2009. Commissioner Brill was associate at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in New York from 1987 to 1988. She clerked for Vermont Federal District Court Judge Franklin S. Billings, Jr. from 1985 to 1986. Commissioner Brill graduated, magna cum laude, from Princeton University, and from New York University School of Law, where she had a Root-Tilden Scholarship for her commitment to public service.
Since joining the Commission, Ms. Brill has been working actively on issues of critical importance to today’s consumers, including protecting consumers’ privacy, encouraging appropriate advertising substantiation, guarding consumers from financial fraud, and maintaining competition in industries involving health care and high-tech.
Commissioner Brill is an advocate of protecting consumers’ privacy, especially with new online and mobile technologies, and supports the creation and implementation of mechanisms to give consumers better information and control over the collection and use of their personal online information. In her speeches, publications and meetings with a wide variety of stakeholders, Commission Brill calls on industry and policymakers to improve privacy by developing practical solutions rooted in both consumer protection and competition principles.
Commissioner Brill focuses on the need to improve consumer protection in the financial services arena. She advocates improving regulations and enforcement involving credit reporting, debt collection and in other financial areas. She is particularly interested in combatting frauds targeting consumers caught up in the economic downturn. She strongly supports increased cooperation among the FTC, the CFPB, and the States as they implement the provisions of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
Commissioner Brill continues to advocate for effective antitrust enforcement, especially in the health care and high-tech sectors. She wrote the Commission’s unanimous decision in ProMedica, dissolving the merger of two hospitals in Toledo, Ohio. She has called for more effective competition enforcement in the health care sector, including in her statements involving the merger of pharmaceutical management companies Express Scripts and Medco, and the Commission’s decision to withdraw its appeal in FTC v. LabCorp. Her decisions in Google, Intel, and the proposed merger of IDT/PLX demonstrate smart and effective competition enforcement in the high tech sector.
Prior to joining the Commission, Ms. Brill received several national awards for her work protecting consumers, including the National Association of Attorneys General Marvin Award for her “outstanding leadership, expertise, and achievement in advancing the goals of the association,” Privacy International’s Brandeis Award for her work on state and federal privacy issues, and the National Association of Attorneys General’s Privacy Award. Commissioner Brill also served as a Vice-Chair of the Consumer Protection Committee of the Antitrust Section of the American Bar Association and Chair of the National Association of Attorneys General Privacy Working Group. In addition, Commissioner Brill testified before Congress on the Fair Credit Reporting Act, as well as other topics including financial institutions, consumer credit, and affiliate sharing practices.
While she was an Assistant Attorney General, Commissioner Brill published numerous articles on important consumer protection issues, including the costs and benefits of prescription drugs in the American health care system, state fair credit reporting laws, and consumer protection issues relating to tobacco retailing. She also served on many national expert panels focused on consumer protection issues such as pharmaceuticals, privacy, credit reporting, data security breaches, and tobacco.
Read speeches given and articles written by Commissioner Julie Brill here.
