636
Opinion of the Court
late their economies in many ways not inconsistent with the antitrust laws. For example, Oregon may provide for peer review by its physicians without approving anticompetitive conduct by them. See Patrick, 486 U. S., at 105. Or Michigan may regulate its public utilities without authorizing monopolization in the market for electric light bulbs. See Cantor v. Detroit Edison Co., 428 U. S. 579, 596 (1976). So we have held that state-action immunity is disfavored, much as are repeals by implication. Lafayette v. Louisiana Power & Light Co., 435 U. S. 389, 398-399 (1978). By adhering in most cases to fundamental and accepted assumptions about the benefits of competition within the framework of the antitrust laws, we increase the States' regulatory flexibility.
States must accept political responsibility for actions they intend to undertake. It is quite a different matter, however, for federal law to compel a result that the States do not intend but for which they are held to account. Federalism serves to assign political responsibility, not to obscure it. Neither federalism nor political responsibility is well served by a rule that essential national policies are displaced by state regulations intended to achieve more limited ends. For States which do choose to displace the free market with regulation, our insistence on real compliance with both parts of the Midcal test will serve to make clear that the State is responsible for the price fixing it has sanctioned and undertaken to control.
Respondents contend that these concerns are better addressed by the requirement that the States articulate a clear policy to displace the antitrust laws with their own forms of economic regulation. This contention misapprehends the close relation between Midcal's two elements. Both are directed at ensuring that particular anticompetitive mechanisms operate because of a deliberate and intended state policy. See Patrick, supra, at 100. In the usual case, Midcal's requirement that the State articulate a clear policy shows little more than that the State has not acted through inad-
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