OCTOBER TERM, 1991
Syllabus
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the third circuit
No. 91-72. Argued January 13, 1992—Decided June 12, 1992
Petitioner Federal Trade Commission filed an administrative complaint charging respondent title insurance companies with horizontal price fixing in setting fees for title searches and examinations in violation of § 5(a)(1) of the Federal Trade Commission Act. In each of the four States at issue—Connecticut, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Montana—uniform rates were established by a rating bureau licensed by the State and authorized to establish joint rates for its members. Rate filings were made to the state insurance office and became effective unless the State rejected them within a specified period. The Administrative Law Judge held, inter alia, that the rates had been fixed in all four States, but that, in Wisconsin and Montana, respondents' anticompetitive activities were entitled to state-action immunity, as contemplated in Parker v. Brown, 317 U. S. 341, and its progeny. Under this doctrine, a state law or regulatory scheme can be the basis for antitrust immunity if the State (1) has articulated a clear and affirmative policy to allow the anticompetitive conduct and (2) provides active supervision of anticompetitive conduct undertaken by private actors. California Retail Liquor Dealers Assn. v. Midcal Aluminum, Inc., 445 U. S. 97, 105. The Commission, which conceded that the first part of the test was met, held on review that none of the States had conducted sufficient supervision to warrant immunity. The Court of Appeals reversed, holding that the existence of a state regulatory program, if staffed, funded, and empowered by law, satisfied the active supervision requirement. Thus, it concluded, respondents' conduct in all the States was entitled to state-action immunity.
Held: 1. State-action immunity is not available under the regulatory schemes in Montana and Wisconsin. Pp. 632-640. (a) Principles of federalism require that federal antitrust laws be subject to supersession by state regulatory programs. Parker, supra, at 350-352; Midcal, supra; Patrick v. Burget, 486 U. S. 94. Midcal's two-part test confirms that States may not confer antitrust immunity on private persons by fiat. Actual state involvement is the precondition for immunity, which is conferred out of respect for the State's ongoing
621
Page: Index 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007