Cite as: 526 U. S. 756 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
members are proximate and apparent. Through for-profit subsidiaries, the CDA provides advantageous insurance and preferential financing arrangements for its members, and it engages in lobbying, litigation, marketing, and public relations for the benefit of its members' interests. This congeries of activities confers far more than de minimis or merely presumed economic benefits on CDA members; the economic benefits conferred upon the CDA's profit-seeking professionals plainly fall within the object of enhancing its members' "profit," 6 which the FTC Act makes the jurisdictional touch-6 This conclusion is consistent with holdings by a number of Courts of Appeals. In FTC v. National Comm'n on Egg Nutrition, the Court of Appeals held that a nonprofit association "organized for the profit of the egg industry," 517 F. 2d, at 488, fell within the Commission's jurisdiction. In American Medical Assn. v. FTC, 638 F. 2d 443 (CA2 1980), the Court of Appeals held that the "business aspects," id., at 448, of the AMA's activities brought it within the Commission's reach. These cases are consistent with our conclusion that an entity organized to carry on activities that will confer greater than de minimis or presumed economic benefits on profit-seeking members certainly falls within the Commission's jurisdiction. In Community Blood Bank v. FTC, the Court of Appeals addressed the question whether the Commission had jurisdiction over a blood bank and an association of hospitals. It held that "the question of the jurisdiction over the corporations or other associations involved should be determined on an ad hoc basis," 405 F. 2d, at 1018, and that the Commission's jurisdiction extended to "any legal entity without shares of capital which engages in business for profit within the traditional meaning of that language," ibid. (emphasis deleted). The Court of Appeals also said that "[a]ccording to a generally accepted definition 'profit' means gain from business or investment over and above expenditures, or gain made on business or investment where both receipts or payments are taken into account," id., at 1017, although in the same breath it noted that the term's "meaning must be derived from the context in which it is used," id., at 1016. Our decision here is fully consistent with Community Blood Bank, because the CDA contributes to the profits of at least some of its members, even on a restrictive definition of profit as gain above expenditures. (It should go without saying that the FTC Act does not require for Commission jurisdiction that members of an entity turn a profit on their membership, but only that the entity be organized to carry on business for members' profit.) Nonetheless, we do not, and indeed, on the facts here, could
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