Antitrust Alert: State Boards Are Vulnerable to Antitrust Attack Under US Supreme Court Ruling

Summary: The US Supreme Court Wednesday redefined the scope of federal antitrust immunity as applied to state regulatory boards. The Court’s 6–3 decision in North Carolina State Board of Dental Examiners v. FTC ruled that a state professional board that is controlled by the profession that it regulates does not have antitrust immunity under the state-action doctrine unless it is actively supervised by state government officials. Antitrust practitioners have watched the case closely because of its potential for broad application to professional, trade, and industry groups that have been authorized by state governments to regulate the markets in which they compete, but are not closely supervised on how they do so.