Former U.S. Labor Secretary Gene Scalia games out the future of the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) recently proposed rule that would ban the use of most noncompete clauses in today’s Wall Street Journal. He writes that:
The Federal Trade Commission’s ban on noncompete agreements may be the most audacious federal rule ever proposed. If finalized, it would outlaw terms in 30 million contracts and pre-empt laws in virtually every state. It would also, by the FTC’s own account, reduce capital investment, worker training and possibly job growth, while increasing the wage gap. The commission says the rule would deliver a meager 2.3% wage increase for hourly workers, versus a 9.4% increase for CEOs.
Three phases lie ahead for the proposal: rule-making, litigation and compliance. … The FTC is likely to finalize the rule within a year, to ensure the Biden administration can begin the task of defending it in the litigation phase. The proposal’s legal vulnerabilities are legion. …
Sketching the likely future of the proposed rule in this way is helpful. Most of those affected by this rule are unlikely to be familiar with the rulemaking process or the judicial process for reviewing agency rules; indeed, many are likely to hear coverage of the proposed rule and mistake it for a regulation that’s already in effect. The cost of that confusion is made clear by Scalia’s ultimate takeaway: that the courts are very likely to reject the rule (and perhaps the FTC’s authority to adopt these types of competition rules), but only after a protracted and lengthy judicial review process (including, quite possibly, a trip to the U.S. Supreme Court).
As Scalia explains, many employers will act upon this likely ill-fated rule out of fear or confusion, altering their employment contacts in ways that will be hard to later amend:
Unfortunately, some employers may now reduce the benefits they offer in exchange for noncompetes, for fear the rule may eventually render the agreement unenforceable. But because the FTC may change aspects of the rule—and because the courts are likely to invalidate it—American businesses don’t need to invest now in complying with this deeply flawed proposal.
This should raise serious concern about the FTC’s approach to this issue. It is very likely that the Commission is aware of the rocky shoals that lie ahead. But it is also likely that the Commission knows that its posturing will affect the conduct of the business community. It’s not much of a leap to conclude that the Commission—that is, its three-member majority—is using its rulemaking process, not its substantive legal authority, as a norm entrepreneur, to jawbone the business community and move the Overton window that frames discussion of noncompete clauses. I feel dirty writing a sentence as jargon-filled as that one, but no dirtier than the Commission should feel for abusing rulemaking procedures to achieve substantive ends beyond its legal authority.
This concern resembles an issue currently before the Supreme Court: Axon Enterprises v. FTC, another case that involves the FTC. Generally, agency actions cannot be challenged in federal court until the agency has finalized its action and affected parties have exhausted their appeals before the agency. Indeed, the statutes that govern some agencies (including the FTC) have provisions that have been interpreted as preventing challenges to the agency’s authority from being brought before a federal district court.
In Axon, the Supreme Court is considering whether a company subject to administrative proceedings before the Commission can challenge the constitutionality of those proceedings in district court prior to their completion. Oral arguments were heard this past November and, while reading tea leaves based upon oral arguments is a fraught endeavor, those arguments did not seem to go well for the FTC. It seems likely that the Court will allow firms to raise such challenges prior to final agency action in adjudication, precisely because not allowing them allows the Commission to cause non-redressable harms to the firms it investigates; several years of unconstitutional litigation can be devastating to a business.
The Axon case involves adjudication against a single firm, which raises some different issues from those raised when an agency is developing rules that will affect an entire industry. Most notably, constitutional Due Process protections are implicated when the government takes action against a single firm. It is unlikely that the outcome in Axon—even if as adverse to the FTC as foreseeably possible—would extend to allow firms to challenge an agency rulemaking process on the ground that it exceeds the agency’s statutory (not even constitutional) authority.
But the Commission should nonetheless take the concerns at issue in Axon to heart. If the Supreme Court rules against the Commission in Axon, it will be a strong signal that the Court has concerns about how the Commission is using the authority that Congress has given it. One could even say that it will be the latest in a series of such signals, given that the Court recently struck down the Commission’s Section 13(b) civil-penalty authority. As Scalia notes, the Commission is already pushing the outermost limits of its statutory authority with the rule that it has proposed. The extent of the coming judicial (or congressional) rebuke will be greatly expanded if the courts feel that the agency has abused the rulemaking process to achieve substantive goals that exceed that outermost limit.
[This post is a contribution to Truth on the Market‘s continuing digital symposium “FTC Rulemaking on Unfair Methods of Competition.”You can find other posts at thesymposium page here. Truth on the Market also invites academics, practitioners, and other antitrust/regulation commentators to send us 1,500-4,000 word responses for potential inclusion in the symposium.]
In a recent op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, Svetlana Gans and Eugene Scalia look at three potential traps the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) could trigger if it pursues the aggressive rulemaking agenda many have long been expecting. From their opening:
FTC Chairman Lina Khan has Rooseveltian ambitions for the agency. … Within weeks the FTC is expected to begin a blizzard of rule-makings that will include restrictions on employment noncompete agreements and the practices of technology companies.
If Ms. Khan succeeds, she will transform the FTC’s regulation of American business. But there’s a strong chance this regulatory blitz will fail. The FTC is a textbook case for how federal agencies could be affected by the re-examination of administrative law under way at the Supreme Court.
The first pitfall into which the FTC might fall, Gans and Scalia argue, is the “major questions” doctrine. Recently illuminated in the Supreme Court’s opinion in West Virginia v. EPAdecision, the doctrine holds that federal agencies cannot enact regulations of vast economic and political significance without clear congressional authorization. The sorts of rules the FTC appears to be contemplating “would run headlong into” major questions, Gans and Scalia write, a position shared by several contributors to Truth on the Market‘s recent symposium on the potential for FTC rulemakings on unfair methods of competition (UMC).
The second trap the authors expect might trip up an ambitious FTC is the major questions doctrine’s close cousin: the nondelegation doctrine. The nondelegation doctrine holds that there are limits to how much authority Congress can delegate to a federal agency, even if it does so clearly.
Curiously, as Gans and Scalia note, the last time the Supreme Court invoked the nondelegation doctrine involved regulations to implement “codes of fair competition”—nearly identical, on their face, to the commission’s current interest in rules to prohibit unfair methods of competition. That last case, Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, is more than 80 years old. The doctrine has since lain dormant for multiple generations. But in recent years, several justice have signaled their openness to reinvigorating the doctrine. As Gans and Scalia note, “[a]n aggressive FTC competition rule could be a tempting target” for them.
Finally, the authors anticipate an overly aggressive FTC may find itself entangled in yet a thorny web wrapped around the very heart of the administrative state: the constitutionality of so-called independent agencies. Again, the relevant constitutional doctrine giving rise to these agencies results from another 1935 case involving the FTC itself: Humphrey’s Executor v. United States. While the Court in that opinion upheld the notion that Congress can create agencies led by officials who operate independently of direct presidential control, conservative justices have long questioned the doctrine’s legitimacy and the Roberts court, in particularly, has trimmed its outer limits. An overly aggressive FTC might present an opportunity to further check the independence of these agencies.
While it remains unclear the precise rules the FTC seek try to develop using its UMC authority, the clearest signs are that it will focus first on labor issues, such as emerging research around labor monopsony and firms’ use of noncompete clauses. Indeed, Eric Posner, who joined the U.S. Justice Department Antitrust Division earlier this year as counsel on these issues, recently acknowledged that: “There is this very close and complicated relationship between labor law and antitrust law that has to be maintained.”
If the FTC were to upset this relationship, such as by using its UMC authority either to circumvent the National Labor Relations Board in addressing competition concerns or to assist the NLRB in exceeding its own statutory authority, it would be unsurprising for the courts to exercise their constitutional role as a check on a rogue agency.
Welcome to the FTC UMC Roundup for the middle of July. As we sit between the Fourth of July and August recess, the first images from the James Webb space telescope are a nice way to put the day-to-day grind of antitrust law into perspective. In part, that’s my way of saying that as Congress rushes towards recess, POTUS is out of the country, and several Senators are fighting Covid (we hope all get well soon), it hasn’t been the busiest week in antitrust law. But it’s also a useful framing for this week’s headline.
This week’s headline: Just as the Webb telescope peers back into the history of the universe, this is a week to look back into recent competition history: the one year anniversary of the President’s Executive Orderon competition policy. Aspen Digital hosted a discussion about the Order with National Economic Council director Brian Deese. As one would expect, the discussion started with brief remarks in which Deese was able to very briefly outline the Order’s very several impacts over the past year.
Deese’s remarks were followed by a Q&A hosted by NYT reporter Cecilia Kang. Kang pressed Deese on a few topics. She asked how the recent Major Questions Doctrine ruling in West Virginia v. EPA affects the administration’s thinking about competition policy. Deese’s response – undoubtedly the correct one – is that the administration is looking for areas where there is bipartisan legislative interest in Congress. She askedwhether the administration would ask Senate leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to move on pending antitrust legislation (that is, AICOA); when Deese dodged the question about Schumer, she asked again. Curiously, Deese refused to mention Senator Schumer, instead saying that the administration has been working with the bill’s sponsors, Senator Klobuchar (D-MN) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA). (Ben Brody has a piece on the pressures being brought to bear upon Schumer to act on AICOA.)
Deese’s National Economic Council colleague Tim Wu offered some comments on Deese’s speech on Twitter, explaining that the Executive Order has “become a means of trying ensure that competition policy is in line with our macro-economic policy goals.” “In a sense, the agencies are doing microeconomic competition policy, while the Competition Council has an eye on macro effects, and is setting micro priorities from that perspective.”
Continuing with this week’s lede that there’s not much going on: AICOA continues to go nowhere, fast. Supporters of the bill are lobbying the intelligence community to assuage concerns that it could harm national security interests. A spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence responded that “the [Intelligence Community] does not weigh in on the merits of policy options.” Conservative continue to supportAICOA as a tool for cracking down on content moderation policies – contrary to Democratic assurances that it can’t be used in that way. And Access Now has sent a letter to Congress on behalf of various global NGOs arguing that AICOA is necessary to address Big Tech’s human rights violations facilitated by its “reign over the world.” Antitrust law truly is everything to everyone.
Advocacy aside, AICO continues to appear to be dead bill stalling. Cristiano Lima at the Washington Post did a whip call of its own, finding “the number of senators willing to publicly say at this point they back the bills is well short of 60.” Importantly, this includes several senators who had previously publicly supported the bill. Adam Kovacevich walks through the challenging calculus: Senator Klobuchar is focused on getting Republicans to support the bill, and is losing Democratic support along the way. He also screams the loud part out louder: “It’s awfully hard for AICOA backers to claim the bill doesn’t impact content moderation when MAGA conservatives … just come right out and say they’re backing the bill because it would stop Apple/Amazon from banning Parler.”
The irony of it all is mercatus uber alles. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Amazon may be scaling back its private-label brands.
Is anything going on at the FTC? Surprisingly little. Perhaps everyone’s getting ready for the next open meeting. It’s not yet on the calendar, but rumors are flying that rulemakings could be on the agenda.
A lack of activity, however, won’t keep bad news out of the FTC. In what is truly heartbreaking, if not unsurprising, news, under Chair Khan the FTC has fallen from one of the best to one of the worst federal agencies to work for in the latest “Best Places to Work in the Federal Government.” It’s not just FTC employees who have questions about Khan’s leadership. Leah Nylen reports that the US Chamber of Commerce has sued the FTC, asking for disclosure of information under FOIA that the Commission has refused to provide. The Chamber recently prevailed in its efforts to require the Commission to disclose its operations manual.
What should you be reading and watching during this lazy month of July? Well, you could start with contributions to the Truth on the Market FTC UMC Rulemaking Symposium. We have had recent contributionssummarizingchapters from Dan Crane’s recent book on the topic. These chapters were presented at a recent CCIA/Concurrences conference, recordings of which are also now online. TechFreedom is hosting its 2022 Policy Summit on July 20 and on July 27 Punchbowl is hosting a conversation with Representative Eric Swalwell on “the importance of privacy and security in existing and new technologies.”
Signing off with a recommended deep read: Adam White helps to contextualizeWest Virginia v. EPA and the Major Questions Doctrine in the broader scheme of the Court’s recent jurisprudence. It’s easy for those in the trenches to focus on what individual opinions mean for specific agencies and issues. But these cases are dots in a much larger mosaic of shifting jurisprudential and political theory.
Happy Independence Day Week! Having started off with the holiday, this has been a relatively slow week on the antitrust front in the United States. But never fear, Europe is here to help fill out the weekly news roundup. And, even on a slow week there is plenty in the news domestically. Perhaps more important: everyone working on FTC and antitrust issues should take advantage of these respites when the come – any calm most likely is a harbinger of a storm to come.
This week’s headline is the passage of the Digital Markets Act (DMA)and Digital Services Act (DSA) by the European Parliament. The DMA has often been compared to the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA) – as of this week their biggest difference is that the DMA now is law while AICOA’s fate continues to appear fraught. For more details on the substance the DMA, we’ve discussed it on here on Truth on the Market, and both Axios and the Chamber of Commerce offer overviews.
Also on the European front, Europeans are beginning to reckon with the fact that soon Facebook may cease operations in Europe due to the bloc’s privacy rules. For pro-privacy regulators this may be viewed as a win. The rest of Europe was unavailable for comment (likely due to European privacy laws).
Back in the states the biggest news continues to be fallout from the Supreme Court’s embrace of the major questions doctrine. After a few days of misreporting on the opinion in West Virginia v. EPA as preventing the EPA from regulating greenhouse gasses, the media is now realizing that the import of the opinion goes to broader questions of the administrative state – and that it could impact tech regulation in particular.
Sophisticated thinkers have seen the potential impact of the case since before it was decided. In the days since they have been exploring the scope of the ruling and how the lower courts will implement it, discussing its implications for big tech, debating whether it will or will notlimit the FCC’s net neutrality authority (answer: it will). And as numerous posts made as part of this TOTM FTC UMC Symposium have argued, it will likely substantially limit the FTC’s UMC rulemaking authority.
One thing I have wondered is how agencies will respond to the MQD in their rulemaking. Agencies often discuss the importance of their rules in an effort to justify them. Tom Wheeler was fond of discussing the Internet as the “most important network in the history of Man.” Arguing that the costs of regulatory action are very high helps to sell the benefits of regulation as substantial. But now, arguing that the costs of inaction are high might also make it easier to argue that the question being addressed in a major one – of vast political or economic significance. Will we start to see agencies downplay the importance of their work?
As usual, we can’t not have some updates on AICOA. The most salient update may be the lack of update. While Senator Klobuchar (D-MN) continues to push the bill forward, Leader Schumer (D-NY) has no apparent interest in bringing it to the floor. And even if it gets through the Senate, there may be trouble waitingin the House? Beyond that, this week saw both Zach Graves get off the fence and speak out against AICOA.
Quick hits: Protocolreports the CFPB is hoping to hire 25 technologists to help it wage war on the tech industry. Bloomberg reports the FTC is toying with the Robinson-Patman Act. And the FTC brings another right-to-repair action, this time against Weber, to prohibit warranties that are voided by independent repairs.
What you missed, What to watch? Last week’s Federalist Society discussion of Biden’s Antitrust Agenda: Mission Creep or Mission Achieved was a must-watch. Hope you didn’t miss it! If you did, you can redeem yourself by making it to AEI’s discussion with FTC Commissioner Noah Phillips on Crossing the Consumer Welfare Rubicon.
Fireworks came a bit early this year. Between the Supreme Court’s end-of-term decisions and this week’s January 6th Committee hearings, it wasn’t a week with much antitrust news coming out of either the FTC or Congress. But the Supreme Court’s made sure to keep things exciting: the opinion in West Virginia v. EPAcase will reshape the regulatory landscape for years to come, including the world of antitrust.
This week’s headline is the WV v. EPA opinion. Nominally about the EPA’s efforts to regulate coal power plants, the opinion is really about the so-called major questions doctrine (MQD). Summarizing in a sentence a case that will be the subject of hundreds of law review articles and years of clarifying litigation, the MQD says that agencies can’t enact regulations of vast political or economic significance unless Congress clearly delegates them the authority and tools to do so.
This outcome isn’t surprising – but it is nonetheless a big deal. For some general discussion, you could do worse than listening to Corbin Barthold and Berin Szóka dissecting the opinion in real-time. Focusing specifically on the FTC, commentators anticipating the ruling have argued that the MQD could substantially curtail the FTC’s UMC authority. Now that we have the opinion, that outcome seems likely confirmed.
The contours of the major questions doctrine are unclear. That is one of the most trenchant criticisms of the doctrine. But the Court’s opinion points to several factors beyond merely relating to a rule of “vast political or economic significance” (which remains the defining characteristic). Claiming new, or only rarely used, regulatory authority suggests a major question, especially if that authority would mark a “transformative expansion” in the agency’s authority. If the power is based in vague language or “ancillary provisions” of a statute suggests a major question. Or Congress having “conspicuously and repeatedly declined” to regulate the issue through legislation suggests a major question. All of these factors apply in the context of the FTC using its UMC authority, based the ancillary rulemaking authority of Section 6(g), to transformatively expand its authority to address any number of issues that are believed to be subject to FTC interest.
At the same time, those concerned about expansive UMC authority should not be too quick to think the UMC rulemaking project dead. The EPA and many other agencies to which the MQD is likely to apply, such as the FCC, have narrower scope than the FTC. While broad, the EPA’s authority is tailored to specific environmental issues; the FCC’s authority is tailored to specific communications technologies. Arguably, the FTC’s authority is more general than other agencies to which the MQD will clearly apply – unfair methods of competition can occur in any aspect of the economy.
Realistically, however, the prospects of the FTC surviving a MQD challenge if it pushes aggressive use of its UMC authority are slim. The bareness of the Section 6(g) rulemaking authority is challenge enough. But perhaps even more important is the theory underlying WV v. EPA and the MQD. Justice Roberts’s majority opinion invokes both separation of powers and legislative intent concerns. The MQD is about both whether Congress meant to, and whether it was appropriate for it to, delegate broad authority to an agency. It seems clear that if Congress wants to delegate substantial power to an agency that the Court expects Congress to be very clear about what that power is and how it is to be used. It is not enough to say “EPA, you regulate environmental stuff; FTC you regulate competition stuff.”
Turning now to other news. Can we call AICOA dead yet? Probably not, but time for Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) to save her American Innovation and Choice Online Act runs low. In addition to the academics, advocates, and Democratic senators (see last week’s Roundup for those details), social justice groups have joined the chorus expressing concerns about how AICOA might limit platforms’ ability to engage in content moderation. Alden Abbott has also brought focus to largely overlooked rule of law concerns raised by AICOA.
Speaking of other dead things, ADPPA seems to be spinning in its own grave. Late last week Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA), chair of the committee the bill would need to go through, said she has no plans to consider the bill in committee – and that Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has no interest in bringing it to the Senate floor. That sounds pretty dead. But the Court’s Dobbs opinion has made it deader. Over the weekend, a spokesperson for Cantwell “does not adequately protect against the privacy threats posed by a post-Roe world.”
So, it seems likely the FTC remains the only potential privacy bulwark to which privacy advocates can turn. President Biden is already asking them to address Dobbs-related privacy issues. But query: would an FTC effort to develop rules to address privacy concerns present a major question – these are issues of longstanding Congressional debate and substantial economic and political importance? (I expect not; but I expect the issue could get into court.)
Some quick hits, literally. Today one forgets about the CFPB or its director, Rohit Chopra, at their peril. The Chamber of Commerce is trying to change this. ITIF’s Julie Carlson talks aboutthe meteoric rise and fall of Lina Khan. The fall seems premature, but the WV v. EPA has certainly brought the ground closer. It may be a less literal hit, perhaps, but MLB’s antitrust exemption may be in its last innings. And where’s the beef? Price stabilization legislation is moving through the Senate Ag Committee.
Some parting thoughts? If you insist. Last week we mentioned this week’s Concurrences conference on the Rulemaking Authority of the FTC. It was a great event! Among other things, it introduced Dan Crane’s new, must-read, bookon the topic, featuring chapters by a who’s-who of writers in the field. Several authors have previously contributed to the Truth on the Market symposium on the topic (hey, this post is part of that, too!) – and in the coming week we will have some more contributions from those authors.
Finally, a Friday afternoon read: Last week was Microsoft Internet Explorer’s last as a going concern. What can those concerned about big tech learn from the browser wars? Find out here.
The FTC UMC Roundup, part of the Truth on the Market FTC UMC Symposium, is a weekly roundup of news relating to the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust and Unfair Methods of Competition authority. If you would like to receive this and other posts relating to these topics, subscribe to the RSS feed here. If you have news items you would like to suggest for inclusion, please mail them to us at ghurwitz@laweconcenter.org and/or kfierro@laweconcenter.org.
[Continuing our FTC UMC Rulemaking symposium, today’s first guest post is from Richard J. Pierce Jr., the Lyle T. Alverson Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School. We are also publishing a related post today from Andrew K. Magloughlin and Randolph J. May of the Free State Foundation. You can find other posts at the symposium page here. Truth on the Market also invites academics, practitioners, and other antitrust/regulation commentators to send us 1,500-4,000 word responses for potential inclusion in the symposium.]
FTC Rulemaking Power
In 2021, President Joe Biden appointed a prolific young scholar, Lina Khan, to chair the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Khan strongly dislikes almost every element of antitrust law. She has stated her intention to use notice and comment rulemaking to change antitrust law in many ways. She was unable to begin this process for almost a year because the FTC was evenly divided between Democratic and Republican appointees, and she has not been able to elicit any support for her agenda from the Republican members. She will finally get the majority she needs to act in the next few days, as the U.S. Senate appears set to confirm Alvaro Bedoya to the fifth spot on the commission.
Chair Khan has argued that the FTC has the power to use notice-and-comment rulemaking to define the term “unfair methods of competition” as that term is used in Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act. Section 5 authorizes the FTC to define and to prohibit both “unfair acts” and “unfair methods of competition.” For more than 50 years after the 1914 enactment of the statute, the FTC, Congress, courts, and scholars interpreted it to empower the FTC to use adjudication to implement Section 5, but not to use rulemaking for that purpose.
In 1973, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit held that the FTC has the power to use notice-and-comment rulemaking to implement Section 5. Congress responded by amending the statute in 1975 and 1980 to add many time-consuming and burdensome procedures to the notice-and-comment process. Those added procedures had the effect of making the rulemaking process so long that the FTC gave up on its attempts to use rulemaking to implement Section 5.
Khan claims that the FTC has the power to use notice-and-comment rulemaking to define “unfair methods of competition,” even though it must use the extremely burdensome procedures that Congress added in 1975 and 1980 to define “unfair acts.” Her claim is based on a combination of her belief that the current U.S. Supreme Court would uphold the 1973 D.C. Circuit decision that held that the FTC has the power to use notice-and-comment rulemaking to implement Section 5 and her belief that a peculiarly worded provision of the 1975 amendment to the FTC Act allows the FTC to use notice-and-comment rulemaking to define “unfair methods of competition,” even though it requires the FTC to use the extremely burdensome procedure to issue rules that define “unfair acts.” The FTC has not attempted to use notice-and-comment rulemaking to define “unfair methods of competition” since Congress amended the statute in 1975.
I am skeptical of Khan’s argument. I doubt that the Supreme Court would uphold the 1973 D.C. Circuit opinion, because the D.C. Circuit used a method of statutory interpretation that no modern court uses and that is inconsistent with the methods of statutory interpretation that the Supreme Court uses today. I also doubt that the Supreme Court would interpret the 1975 statutory amendment to distinguish between “unfair acts” and “unfair methods of competition” for purposes of the procedures that the FTC is required to use to issue rules to implement Section 5.
Even if the FTC has the power to use notice-and-comment rulemaking to define “unfair methods of competition,” I am confident that the Supreme Court would not uphold an exercise of that power that has the effect of making a significant change in antitrust law. That would be a perfect candidate for application of the major questions doctrine. The court will not uphold an “unprecedented” action of “vast economic or political significance” unless it has “unmistakable legislative support.” I will now describe four hypothetical exercises of the rulemaking power that Khan believes that the FTC possesses to illustrate my point.
Hypothetical Exercises of FTC Rulemaking Power
Creation of a Right to Repair
President Biden has urged the FTC to create a right for an owner of any product to repair the product or to have it repaired by an independent service organization (ISO). The Supreme Court’s 1992 opinion in Eastman Kodak v. Image Technical Services tells us all we need to know about the likelihood that it would uphold a rule that confers a right to repair. When Kodak took actions that made it impossible for ISOs to repair Kodak photocopiers, the ISOs argued that Kodak’s action violated both Section 1 and Section 2 of the Sherman Act. The Court held that Kodak could prevail only if it could persuade a jury that its view of the facts was accurate. The Court remanded the case for a jury trial to address three contested issues of fact.
The Court’s reasoning in Kodak is inconsistent with any version of a right to repair that the FTC might attempt to create through rulemaking. The Court expressed its view that allowing an ISO to repair a product sometimes has good effects and sometimes has bad effects. It concluded that it could not decide whether Kodak’s new policy was good or bad without first resolving the three issues of fact on which the parties disagreed. In a 2021 report to Congress, the FTC agreed with the Supreme Court. It identified seven factual contingencies that can cause a prohibition on repair of a product by an ISO to have good effects or bad effects. It is naïve to expect the Supreme Court to change its approach to repair rights in response to a rule in which the FTC attempts to create a right to repair, particularly when the FTC told Congress that it agrees with the Court’s approach immediately prior to Khan’s arrival at the agency.
Prohibition of Reverse-Payment Settlements of Patent Disputes Involving Prescription Drugs
Some people believe that settlements of patent-infringement disputes in which the manufacturer of a generic drug agrees not to market the drug in return for a cash payment from the manufacturer of the brand-name drug are thinly disguised agreements to create a monopoly and to share the monopoly rents. Khan has argued that the FTC could issue a rule that prohibits such reverse-payment settlements. Her belief that a court would uphold such a rule is contradicted by the Supreme Court’s 2013 opinion in FTC v. Actavis. The Court unanimously rejected the FTC’s argument in support of a rebuttable presumption that reverse payments are illegal. Four justices argued that reverse-payment settlements can never be illegal if they are within the scope of the patent. The five-justice majority held that a court can determine that a reverse-payment settlement is illegal only after a hearing in which it applies the rule of reason to determine whether the payment was reasonable.
A Prohibition on Below-Cost Pricing When the Firm Cannot Recoup Its Losses
Khan believes that illegal predatory pricing by dominant firms is widespread and extremely harmful to competition. She particularly dislikes the Supreme Court’s test for identifying predatory pricing. That test requires proof that a firm that engages in below-cost pricing has a reasonable prospect of recouping its losses. She wants the FTC to issue a rule in which it defines predatory pricing as below-cost pricing without any prospect that the firm will be able to recoup its losses.
The history of the Court’s predatory-pricing test shows how unrealistic it is to expect the Court to uphold such a rule. The Court first announced the test in a Sherman Act case in 1986. Plaintiffs attempted to avoid the precedential effect of that decision by filing complaints based on predatory pricing under the Robinson-Patman Act. The Court rejected that attempt in a 1993 opinion. The Court made it clear that the test for determining whether a firm is engaged in illegal predatory pricing is the same no matter whether the case arises under the Sherman Act or the Robinson-Patman Act. The Court undoubtedly would reject the FTC’s effort to change the definition of predatory pricing by relying on the FTC Act instead of the Sherman Act or the Robinson-Patman Act.
A Prohibition of Noncompete Clauses in Contracts to Employ Low-Wage Employees
President Biden has expressed concern about the increasing prevalence of noncompete clauses in employment contracts applicable to low wage employees. He wants the FTC to issue a rule that prohibits inclusion of noncompete clauses in contracts to employ low-wage employees. The Supreme Court would be likely to uphold such a rule.
A rule that prohibits inclusion of noncompete clauses in employment contracts applicable to low-wage employees would differ from the other three rules I discussed in many respects. First, it has long been the law that noncompete clauses can be included in employment contracts only in narrow circumstances, none of which have any conceivable application to low-wage contracts. The only reason that competition authorities did not bring actions against firms that include noncompete clauses in low-wage employment contracts was their belief that state labor law would be effective in deterring firms from engaging in that practice. Thus, the rule would be entirely consistent with existing antitrust law.
Second, there are many studies that have found that state labor law has not been effective in deterring firms from including noncompete clauses in low-wage employment contracts and many studies that have found that the increasing use of noncompete clauses in low-wage contracts is causing a lot of damage to the performance of labor markets. Thus, the FTC would be able to support its rule with high-quality evidence.
Third, the Supreme Court’s unanimous 2021 opinion in NCAA v. Alstom indicates that the Court is receptive to claims that a practice that harms the performance of labor markets is illegal. Thus, I predict that the Court would uphold a rule that prohibits noncompete clauses in employment contracts applicable to low-wage employees if it holds that the FTC can use notice-and-comment rulemaking to define “unfair methods of competition,” as that term is used in Section 5 of the FTC Act. That caveat is important, however. As I indicated at the beginning of this essay, I doubt that the FTC has that power.
I would urge the FTC not to use notice-and comment rulemaking to address the problems that are caused by the increasing use of noncompete clauses in low-wage contracts. There is no reason for the FTC to put a lot of time and effort into a notice-and-comment rulemaking in the hope that the Court will conclude that the FTC has the power to use notice-and-comment rulemaking to implement Section 5. The FTC can implement an effective prohibition on the inclusion of noncompete clauses in employment contracts applicable to low-wage employees by using a combination of legal tools that it has long used and that it clearly has the power to use—issuance of interpretive rules and policy statements coupled with a few well-chosen enforcement actions.
Alternative Ways to Improve Antitrust Law
There are many other ways in which Khan can move antitrust law in the directions that she prefers. She can make common cause with the many mainstream antitrust scholars who have urged incremental changes in antitrust law and who have conducted the studies needed to support those proposed changes. Thus, for instance, she can move aggressively against other practices that harm the performance of labor markets, change the criteria that the FTC uses to decide whether to challenge proposed mergers and acquisitions, and initiate actions against large platform firms that favor their products over the products of third parties that they sell on their platforms.
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