Cite as: 526 U. S. 756 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
than they would in its absence, then restricting such advertising would reduce the demand for dental services, not the supply; and it is of course the producers' supply of a good in relation to demand that is normally relevant in determining whether a producer-imposed output limitation has the anticompetitive effect of artificially raising prices,13 see General Leaseways, Inc. v. National Truck Leasing Assn., 744 F. 2d 588, 594-595 (CA7 1984) ("An agreement on output also equates to a price-fixing agreement. If firms raise price, the market's demand for their product will fall, so the amount supplied will fall too—in other words, output will be restricted. If instead the firms restrict output directly, price will as mentioned rise in order to limit demand to the reduced supply. Thus, with exceptions not relevant here, raising price, reducing output, and dividing markets have the same anticompetitive effects").
Although the Court of Appeals acknowledged the CDA's view that "claims about quality are inherently unverifiable and therefore misleading," 128 F. 3d, at 728, it responded that this concern "does not justify banning all quality claims without regard to whether they are, in fact, false or misleading," ibid. As a result, the court said, "the restriction is a sufficiently naked restraint on output to justify quick look analysis." Ibid. The court assumed, in these words, that some dental quality claims may escape justifiable censure, because they are both verifiable and true. But its implicit
13 Justice Breyer wonders if we "mea[n] this statement as an argument against the anticompetitive tendencies that flow from an agreement not to advertise service quality." Post, at 791. But as the preceding sentence shows, we intend simply to question the logic of the Court of Appeals's suggestion that the restrictions are anticompetitive because they somehow "affect output," 128 F. 3d, at 728, presumably with the intent to raise prices by limiting supply while demand remains constant. We do not mean to deny that an agreement not to advertise service quality might have anticompetitive effects. We merely mean that, absent further analysis of the kind Justice Breyer undertakes, it is not possible to conclude that the net effect of this particular restriction is anticompetitive.
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