## Facts

- Private attorneys who regularly accepted court-appointed indigent defense work in the District of Columbia sought increases in their compensation after repeated unsuccessful efforts to obtain legislative action.
- The lawyers, acting through their association and officers, agreed to refuse new court appointments unless the District raised the hourly rate paid for appointed counsel.
- The concerted refusal to accept new appointments severely disrupted the District’s criminal justice system.
- The District increased compensation, and the lawyers ended the boycott.
- The Federal Trade Commission filed an administrative complaint alleging an agreement to fix prices and conduct a boycott constituting an unfair method of competition under § 5 of the FTC Act.

## Issues

1. Whether a concerted refusal by competing lawyers to accept new court appointments to obtain higher fees is a per se unlawful horizontal price-fixing and group boycott restraint enforceable under § 5 of the FTC Act.
2. Whether the First Amendment, Noerr-Pennington petitioning immunity, or principles associated with politically motivated boycotts bar application of the antitrust per se rule to the lawyers’ conduct.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed the court of appeals and reinstated the FTC’s order in substantial part.
- The agreement was a horizontal arrangement among competitors to restrict output and raise prices (fees), fitting established per se categories of illegality.
- Claimed public-interest motivations (e.g., improving indigent defense) did not remove the restraint from per se treatment.
- Noerr-Pennington did not immunize an economically coercive agreement among competitors merely because it sought favorable government action.
- The boycott’s expressive component did not prevent per se condemnation of the underlying economic restraint.

## Legal Principles

- Horizontal price-fixing and concerted refusals to deal that restrict output are per se unlawful, without a requirement to prove actual market power.
- Antitrust law does not excuse a classic restraint of trade based on asserted social justifications for the restraint.
- Noerr-Pennington protects genuine petitioning activity but does not shield a private cartel’s agreement to withhold services to extract higher prices from the government.
- The First Amendment protects speech and advocacy associated with a protest, but it does not protect combining economic power through a boycott to force purchasers to pay higher prices; incidental burdens on expression do not bar per se antitrust enforcement.

## Conclusion

The Court held that competing lawyers’ collective refusal to accept new indigent-defense appointments to secure higher compensation was a per se unlawful price-fixing/group boycott restraint, and that neither petitioning immunity nor the boycott’s expressive aspects displaced ordinary antitrust rules.


FTC v. Superior Ct. Trial Lawyers Ass’n, 493 U.S. 411 (1990)