Federal Trade Commission, Petitioner v. Phoebe Putney Health System, Inc., et al. (568 U.S. 216)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided February 19, 2013 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 568 U.S. 216 · 133 S. Ct. 1003
- Docket
- No. 11-1160
- Argued
- November 26, 2012
- Decided
- February 19, 2013
- Term
- October Term 2012
- Vote
- 9–0
- Majority author
- Justice Sotomayor
- Issue area
- Economic Activity
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
How the Justices voted
- Majority
- Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Scalia, Justice Kennedy, Justice Thomas, Justice Ginsburg, Justice Breyer, Justice Alito, Justice Sotomayor (wrote), Justice Kagan
Oral argument transcript and advocates · Opinion on Justia
Opinion excerpt
Justice Sotomayok delivered the opinion of the Court. Under this Court’s state-action immunity doctrine, when a local governmental entity acts pursuant to a clearly articulated and affirmatively expressed state policy to displace competition, it is exempt from scrutiny under the federal antitrust laws. In this case, we must decide whether a Georgia law that creates special-purpose public entities called hospital authorities and gives those entities general corporate powers, including the power to acquire hospitals, clearly articulates and affirmatively expresses a state policy to permit acquisitions that substantially lessen competition. Because Georgia’s grant of general corporate powers to hospital authorities does not include permission to use those powers anticompetitively, we hold that the clear-articulation test is not satisfied and state-action immunity does not apply. f—4 A In 1941, the State of Georgia amended its Constitution to ■ allow political subdivisions to provide health care services. 1941 Ga. Laws p. 50. The State concurrently enacted the Hospital Authorities Law (Law), id., at 241, Ga. Code Ann. §31-7-70 et seq. (2012), “to provide a mechanism for the operation and maintenance of needed health care facilities in the several counties and municipalities of th[e] state.” §31-7-76(a). “The purpose of the constitutional provision and the statute based thereon…
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