Cite as: 508 U. S. 49 (1993)
Opinion of the Court
rather than " 'a pattern of baseless, repetitive claims' "). Whether applying Noerr as an antitrust doctrine or invoking it in other contexts, we have repeatedly reaffirmed that evidence of anticompetitive intent or purpose alone cannot transform otherwise legitimate activity into a sham. See, e. g., FTC v. Superior Court Trial Lawyers Assn., 493 U. S. 411, 424 (1990); NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co., 458 U. S. 886, 913-914 (1982). Cf. Vendo, supra, at 635-636, n. 6, 639, n. 9 (plurality opinion of Rehnquist, J.); id., at 644, n., 645 (Blackmun, J., concurring in result). Indeed, by analogy to Noerr's sham exception, we held that even an "improperly motivated" lawsuit may not be enjoined under the National Labor Relations Act as an unfair labor practice unless such litigation is "baseless." Bill Johnson's Restaurants, Inc. v. NLRB, 461 U. S. 731, 743-744 (1983). Our decisions therefore establish that the legality of objectively reasonable petitioning "directed toward obtaining governmental action" is "not at all affected by any anticompetitive purpose [the actor] may have had." Noerr, 365 U. S., at 140, quoted in Pennington, supra, at 669.
Our most recent applications of Noerr immunity further demonstrate that neither Noerr immunity nor its sham exception turns on subjective intent alone. In Allied Tube, supra, at 503, and FTC v. Trial Lawyers, supra, at 424, 427, and n. 11, we refused to let antitrust defendants immunize otherwise unlawful restraints of trade by pleading a subjective intent to seek favorable legislation or to influence governmental action. Cf. National Collegiate Athletic Assn. v. Board of Regents of Univ. of Okla., 468 U. S. 85, 101, n. 23 (1984) ("[G]ood motives will not validate an otherwise anticompetitive practice"). In Columbia v. Omni Outdoor Advertising, Inc., 499 U. S. 365 (1991), we similarly held that challenges to allegedly sham petitioning activity must be resolved according to objective criteria. We dispelled the notion that an antitrust plaintiff could prove a sham merely by showing that its competitor's "purposes were to delay [the
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