State Action Immunity

It's shaping up to be a busy term for antitrust issues at the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court on January 12 decided to review a third antitrust case. In the context of a price fixing action against…

Occupational licensing has been under antitrust attack in the last several years, from two Supreme Court cases narrowing the state action exemption to numerous reports on local regulations such as…

When the FTC prevailed in narrowing the state action exemption in North Carolina Board of Dental Examiners in February 2015, the hope of many commentators was that the result might be a reduction in…

The FTC has notched two Supreme Court wins in recent years to narrow the state action exemption.  But elements of those two cases might best be seen as evidence that the FTC is losing the broader…

So, the only real surprise about yesterday’s opinion in North Carolina State Bd of Dental Examiners v. FTC is that it wasn’t unanimous.  The strongly worded six-member majority opinion, already…

I often feel a certain deflation after the Supreme Court decides an antitrust case.  After watching a case for months, prognosticating about it with other antitrusters, reading umpteen blog posts,…

This morning the Court granted certiorari in Federal Trade Commission v. Phoebe Putney Health, No. 11-1160, on appeal from an execrable pair of opinions in the Eleventh Circuit and the Middle…

The next Term may see significant SCOTUS consideration of the state action immunity, the first such case since 1992. The decision below in the defendants’ favor was quite plainly wrong, and so it…