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Opinion of the Court
. . . , establish that a sham lawsuit is baseless as a matter of law." Brief for Petitioners 14. It invites us to adopt an approach under which either "indifference to . . . outcome," ibid., or failure to prove that a petition for redress of grievances "would . . . have been brought but for [a] predatory motive," Tr. of Oral Arg. 10, would expose a defendant to antitrust liability under the sham exception. We decline PRE's invitation.
Those who petition government for redress are generally immune from antitrust liability. We first recognized in Eastern Railroad Presidents Conference v. Noerr Motor Freight, Inc., 365 U. S. 127 (1961), that "the Sherman Act does not prohibit . . . persons from associating together in an attempt to persuade the legislature or the executive to take particular action with respect to a law that would produce a restraint or a monopoly." Id., at 136. Accord, Mine Workers v. Pennington, 381 U. S. 657, 669 (1965). In light of the government's "power to act in [its] representative capacity" and "to take actions . . . that operate to restrain trade," we reasoned that the Sherman Act does not punish "political activity" through which "the people . . . freely inform the government of their wishes." Noerr, 365 U. S., at 137. Nor did we "impute to Congress an intent to invade" the First Amendment right to petition. Id., at 138.
Noerr, however, withheld immunity from "sham" activities because "application of the Sherman Act would be justified" when petitioning activity, "ostensibly directed toward influencing governmental action, is a mere sham to cover . . . an attempt to interfere directly with the business relationships of a competitor." Id., at 144. In Noerr itself, we found that a publicity campaign by railroads seeking legislation harmful to truckers was no sham in that the "effort to influence legislation" was "not only genuine but also highly successful." Ibid.
In California Motor Transport Co. v. Trucking Unlimited, 404 U. S. 508 (1972), we elaborated on Noerr in two rele-
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