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Opinion of the Court
plaintiff's] entry into the market and even to deny it a meaningful access to the appropriate . . . administrative and legislative fora." Id., at 381 (internal quotation marks omitted). We reasoned that such inimical intent "may render the manner of lobbying improper or even unlawful, but does not necessarily render it a 'sham.' " Ibid. Accord, id., at 398 (Stevens, J., dissenting).
In sum, fidelity to precedent compels us to reject a purely subjective definition of "sham." The sham exception so construed would undermine, if not vitiate, Noerr. And despite whatever "superficial certainty" it might provide, a subjective standard would utterly fail to supply "real 'intelligible guidance.' " Allied Tube, supra, at 508, n. 10.
III
We now outline a two-part definition of "sham" litigation. First, the lawsuit must be objectively baseless in the sense that no reasonable litigant could realistically expect success on the merits. If an objective litigant could conclude that the suit is reasonably calculated to elicit a favorable outcome, the suit is immunized under Noerr, and an antitrust claim premised on the sham exception must fail.5 Only if challenged litigation is objectively meritless may a court examine the litigant's subjective motivation. Under this second part of our definition of sham, the court should focus on whether the baseless lawsuit conceals "an attempt to inter-5 A winning lawsuit is by definition a reasonable effort at petitioning for redress and therefore not a sham. On the other hand, when the antitrust defendant has lost the underlying litigation, a court must "resist the understandable temptation to engage in post hoc reasoning by concluding" that an ultimately unsuccessful "action must have been unreasonable or without foundation." Christiansburg Garment Co. v. EEOC, 434 U. S. 412, 421-422 (1978). Accord, Hughes v. Rowe, 449 U. S. 5, 14-15 (1980) (per curiam). The court must remember that "[e]ven when the law or the facts appear questionable or unfavorable at the outset, a party may have an entirely reasonable ground for bringing suit." Christiansburg, supra, at 422.
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