California Dental Association v. Federal Trade Commission (526 U.S. 756)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided May 24, 1999 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 526 U.S. 756 · 119 S. Ct. 1604
- Decided
- May 24, 1999
- Term
- October Term 1998
- Vote
- 5–4
- Majority author
- Justice Souter
- Issue area
- Economic Activity
- Disposition
- Vacated and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Justice Souter delivered the opinion of the Court. There are two issues in this case: whether the jurisdiction of the Federal Trade Commission extends to the California Dental Association (CDA), a nonprofit professional association, and whether a “quick look” sufficed to justify finding that certain advertising restrictions adopted by the CDA violated the antitrust laws. We hold that the Commission’s jurisdiction under the Federal Trade Commission Act (FTC Act) extends to an association that, like the CDA, provides substantial economic benefit to its for-profit members, but that where, as here, any anticompetitive effects of given restraints are far from intuitively obvious, the rule of reason demands a more thorough enquiry into the consequences of those restraints than the Court of Appeals performed. HH The CDA is a voluntary nonprofit association of local dental societies to which some 19,000 dentists belong, including about three-quarters of those practicing in the State. In re California Dental Assn., 121 P. T. C. 190, 196-197 (1996). The CDA is exempt from federal income tax under 26 U. S. C. § 501(c)(6), covering “[bjusiness leagues, chambers of commerce, real-estate boards, [and] boards of trade,” although it has for-profit subsidiaries that give its members advantageous access to various sorts of insurance, including liability coverage, and to financing for their…
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