FTC v. Phoebe Putney Health System, Inc., No. 11-1160: Georgia’s Hospital Authorities Law permits political subdivisions to create public entities called hospital authorities, which are in turn given general corporate powers, including the power to acquire and lease hospitals and other public health facilities. the FTC brought suit on antitrust grounds against one such authority that that was seeking to acquire and lease a hospital. The District Court granted the Authority’s motion to dismiss, holding it immune from antitrust liability under the state-action doctrine, and the Eleventh Circuit affirmed. Today, the Court reversed, holding that the state-action immunity doctrine exempts local governmental entities from federal antitrust laws when they act pursuant to a clearly articulated and affirmatively expressed state policy to displace competition, and that here, where the statute’s grant of general corporate powers to hospital authorities did not include permission to use those powers anticompetitively, state-action immunity did not apply.
The Court's decision is available here.