The Federal Trade Commission and 20 states have filed the FTC Dollar General price lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, accusing Dollar General of long-running deceptive pricing. The complaint says shoppers were charged more at the register than the prices shown on shelves and in advertisements.
Christopher Mufarrige, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, wrote that Dollar General has betrayed the trust of millions of American consumers and imposed significant financial harm on communities and consumers who are already struggling to make their paychecks last.
Dollar General in Goodlettsville
Dollar General is based in Goodlettsville, Tennessee, just outside Nashville. The lawsuit places the company’s pricing practices under federal court review in Tennessee, with 20 states joining the complaint and widening the case beyond a single-state dispute.
The states joining the complaint are Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah and Wisconsin. That list shows how broad the case is, with states from multiple regions joining the Federal Trade Commission in the same filing.
FTC complaint details
The complaint says Dollar General failed to correct the pricing problem despite extensive corporate knowledge of it. In practical terms, the filing centers on a basic retail promise: the price shown before checkout should match the price scanned at the register.
The case also puts the company’s response in focus. Dollar General did not immediately return a request for comment. The FTC says the company knew about the problem and still did not fix it, a claim that will likely shape how the court weighs the size and duration of the alleged harm.
What comes next in Tennessee
The filing does not lay out the next court date or a requested remedy in the available details. For shoppers, the immediate development is the lawsuit itself: a federal complaint that could force Dollar General to answer for price mismatches across its stores, while the 20-state coalition keeps pressure on the company in one case.
