The U.S. Supreme Court this term will hear arguments in a case questioning whether respondents in a Federal Trade Commission proceeding can challenge the constitutionality of the FTC’s procedures and structure in federal district court while an administrative action is pending or whether they must wait for appellate court review of a Commission cease-and-desist order….

Since the premerger notification program of Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) was passed in 1976, challenges to consummated mergers in the U.S. have dwindled and for good reason:  Under HSR, antitrust enforcers can stop mergers that “may be” anti-competitive before they harm consumers.  U.S. antitrust enforcers, however, might be considering more such challenges.  While they are legally possible,…

The FTC and State of Pennsylvania on February 28 moved to block the proposed merger of Jefferson Health and Albert Einstein Healthcare Network, two leading providers of inpatient general acute care hospital services and inpatient acute rehabilitation services in the Philadelphia area. The FTC issued an administrative complaint alleging that the proposed merger would reduce…

After facing a significant loss in its last monopolization action filed just over two years ago, the Federal Trade Commission last week filed a new monopolization case against a provider of e-prescribing solutions for purportedly using exclusive long-term contracts with customers and other tactics to suppress competition from rivals. The FTC announced on April 24 that it…

All four of President Trump’s nominees to serve on the FTC envision continued bipartisan cooperation at the Commission if they are confirmed. The pledges of bipartisanship were made by Joseph Simons, the FTC Chairman Designate, Rohit Chopra, Noah Joshua Phillips, and Christine S. Wilson at a nomination hearing before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science,…

The following post offers a look back at important trends in antitrust enforcement over the past year. Many of the significant developments that are detailed below, including merger challenges and leadership changes, will have a lasting impact on 2018 and beyond. MERGER ENFORCEMENT Department of Justice litigation. The biggest antitrust news story of 2017 was…

The Federal Trade Commission’s new Economic Liberty Task Force, launched by FTC Acting Chairman Maureen Ohlhausen, is an important step that addresses concerns from this blogger and others that the FTC’s commissioners should do more to head off the competitive restraints imposed by certain state licensing requirements. The move is consistent with recent efforts by…

On January 25, 2017, the Trump administration designated Commissioner Maureen Ohlhausen as Acting Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission. Because Ohlhausen has been a Commissioner since 2012 (and held other FTC positions before that), she certainly left plenty of tea leaves for antitrust practitioners to read as they tried to guess how she would act…

As 2016 comes to a close, a number of important trends in antitrust have emerged that will likely have lasting effects on competition law enforcement in the coming years. A new administration will put its mark on federal antitrust policy, but the following five developments witnessed at the Department of Justice Antitrust Division and FTC…