## Facts

- The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) is a small, selective association of foreign entertainment journalists that administers the Golden Globe Awards and limits membership to roughly 85 people.
- Membership allegedly provides professional advantages, including sought-after access to talent and entertainment events connected to HFPA activities.
- Kjersti Flaa and Rosa Gamazo Robbins are experienced entertainment journalists who applied for HFPA membership and alleged they met HFPA’s experience and publication criteria.
- Plaintiffs alleged HFPA repeatedly denied them membership to protect existing members and favor insiders, effectively excluding nonmembers from certain access and opportunities.
- Plaintiffs sued under federal and state antitrust laws, California’s common-law right of fair procedure, and sought declaratory relief asserting HFPA’s bylaws conflicted with its federal tax-exempt status.
- The district court dismissed the antitrust and fair-procedure claims for failure to state a claim and dismissed the tax-exempt-status declaratory claim for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction.

## Issues

1. Whether plaintiffs plausibly alleged antitrust injury and anticompetitive effects in a properly defined relevant market based on HFPA’s membership policies (whether framed as a per se group boycott or under the rule of reason).
2. Whether HFPA is a quasi-public organization whose membership decisions trigger California’s right of fair procedure by impairing a fundamental right to pursue a profession.
3. Whether a private party may obtain declaratory relief in federal court challenging an organization’s compliance with federal tax-exemption requirements.
4. Whether the district court properly disposed of remaining state-law matters after dismissal of federal claims.

## Decision

- The Ninth Circuit affirmed dismissal of all claims.
- The antitrust claims were dismissed because plaintiffs failed to plead a plausible relevant market and failed to allege harm to competition (as distinct from harm to the plaintiffs as competitors).
- The fair-procedure claim was dismissed because HFPA was not treated as quasi-public, and denial of membership did not plausibly bar plaintiffs from working as journalists given their alleged professional success outside HFPA.
- The tax-exempt-status declaratory claim was dismissed for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction because private parties lack a cause of action to enforce another entity’s compliance with federal tax-exemption conditions.
- Any remaining state-law components were properly dismissed or not retained once the federal claims were eliminated at the pleading stage.

## Legal Principles

- Antitrust laws protect competition, not individual competitors; a plaintiff must plead a coherent relevant market and plausible anticompetitive effects within that market.
- Allegations of exclusion from a private association, without plausible market-wide competitive harm, do not establish antitrust injury even if the conduct is labeled a “group boycott.”
- California’s right of fair procedure applies only to quasi-public organizations whose decisions effectively control access to the ability to practice a profession; prestige or advantages from membership are insufficient where the plaintiff can still pursue the occupation.
- Federal courts generally lack jurisdiction over private suits seeking declaratory judgments that another entity’s bylaws or practices violate federal tax-exemption requirements because the tax code does not supply a private enforcement right.

## Conclusion

The Ninth Circuit held that exclusion from a selective journalism association, even one offering valuable access, does not by itself state antitrust or fair-procedure claims absent plausible allegations of market-wide competitive harm or effective foreclosure from the profession, and that private parties cannot use federal declaratory relief to contest an organization’s federal tax-exempt compliance.


Flaa v. Hollywood Foreign Press Ass'n, 55 F.4th 680 (9th Cir. 2022)