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State Action Antitrust Exemption Collides With Deregulation: Rehabilitating The Foreseeability Doctrine, Elizabeth Trujillo

Faculty Scholarship

The state action antitrust exemption, also known as the state action immunity doctrine, is used by antitrust defendants to shield themselves against antitrust liability in instances where their anticompetitive conduct, if not under the aegis of state policy, would have been deemed a violation of federal antitrust law. Under the Midcal test, a court may grant state action immunity to a defendant if it is proven that the alleged anticompetitive conduct is pursuant to a clearly-articulated state policy and has been actively supervised by the state.

This paper evaluates the role, function, and definition of the state action exemption in …