A group of California drivers has put fuel pricing software on trial, and the question behind the case does not stop at the US border.
On 23 June, motorists filed a proposed class action in a federal court in Sacramento against several large fuel retailers, alleging they used an artificial intelligence pricing tool to lift prices at the pump. The named operators include BP, Circle K, 7-Eleven, Marathon Petroleum, Walmart and Albertsons, which between them run more than 1,700 stations across the state. Two of those brands, BP and 7-Eleven, also operate in Australia.
What the suit alleges
The drivers claim the retailers set prices using a shared third-party pricing tool, which draws on data from nearby stations to recommend a price. The complaint argues that when enough sites in an area run the same tool, the effect is to soften competition and push prices up rather than down. In those areas, it alleges, petrol ran as much as 30 cents a gallon higher than it otherwise would have. The plaintiffs note that every one cent rise costs California drivers around $134 million a year.
The suit claims this breached two laws: the Cartwright Act, California’s main antitrust statute, and Assembly Bill 325, a new law that took effect on 1 January 2026 and is aimed squarely at using algorithms to fix prices. It is one of the first real tests of that law.
The software, not the spreadsheet
Competitor price monitoring is nothing new on the forecourt. Operators have always driven past the servo down the road and adjusted the board. What is on trial here is not watching the market; it is whether handing the decision to a shared algorithm, fed by everyone’s prices, tips ordinary competition into something a court will treat as coordination. That is a line nobody has clearly drawn yet.
Why this is a watch item, not a local story
Nothing here touches Australian sites directly. But the legal question travels well, and Australia is arguably more ready for it than most. Since 2017, the Competition and Consumer Act has prohibited “concerted practices” that have the purpose, or are likely to have the effect, of substantially lessening competition. That provision was added precisely because algorithmic coordination may not leave the paper trail of a traditional agreement, the contract, arrangement or understanding that older cartel law required. There has been no contested case on it yet, and the ACCC has said it is looking for one.
Layer on the ACCC’s standing fuel price monitoring and the state real-time price boards such as FuelCheck, and the raw material for a similar argument already exists here. Publishing prices so customers can compare is not the issue. How a pricing tool uses that data might be.
What to watch
The case has to clear early motions before any of this is tested, and it may yet settle or fail. The signals worth watching are whether it survives, whether the ACCC says anything about algorithmic pricing in fuel, and whether Assembly Bill 325 becomes a template other regulators borrow. For now it is a watch item. Keep an eye on it, and keep your own pricing decisions defensible.