h two thousand and nineteen the wall street journal reported that college admissions group votes to allow more aggressive student proving changes come amid threat of continual legal action by the justice department one of the major changes in the undergraduate admissions policy covered by this vote eliminated a section that discouraged pursuing students after may one and this this is a case concerns the medical schools policy the medical schools may one policy is far more of a strictly for students because it has an actual enforcement mechanism among other reasons in actual electronic cross check that should make it even more vulnerable to anti trust liability for the undergraduate case in the medical evidence you just heard the mechanics of your theory of conspiracy here so you say the conspiracy is the schools are sharing information about where candidates where else candidates  be the case that if you know if you don't medical school wants eighty students per year and they lack the information that they're getting pursuant to what you say is the an interest rate of your city why would they need it way more people why wouldn't they just proceed more cautiously and do rolling admissions if they're in a world of uncertainty and they want eight people were interested just just adjust the timing of the admissions offers to end up with eighty people why i think it's i think by not having a market where it's competitive and you don't know what your competitors are doing you have to be more cautious in the sense that you have to why have they sent eight hundred and i think that's actually not unreasonable at all because the yield rate already for real school of medicine is around twenty percent so for every five offers that they send only one of those students chooses more students are going to be admitted every year to yale and so i think that it's also the fact that the universities have to plan more capacity based on the uncertainty because if they if they don't think that's that's the reason that they end up the end of the knitting significantly more as i've suggested in the briefing even if it's one more which certainly wouldn't seem to be a stretch this is an extra buck or in a in an environment so that's why i think that there's there's a there's a definite predictable fact on the overall number of exceptions is that it's going to be way one more question for a legal question which is if we accept the distinction in the case law between educational judgments and economic judgments why is the decision of yale medical school regarding how large a class size why why is that economic rather than educational i think i can imagine a lot of schools just launching and deciding to be small schools because they think there are educational benefits what i think there's a lot of things that go into what size of a class you ultimately have one of the major ones is what your resources are your schools oh yeah in the long term you know you're going to you're going to direct your resources based in part of your educational judgments but i don't think that that means that you can assume that students are going to have more options to it's not just it's not purely the number of students in the class it's also dulls of the choice of students and that's what i think the justice department is concerned about in part imagine obviously economic justifications for the decision to set the class size city and i but i can imagine educational launch as well  i think that this is this is not a this is not a context where you're talking about a policy where you should really be deferring to medical schools like in that case you know if it was something about the number of credits that you have obtained to get that degree or you know mandating a certain standard for you know whatever it is hours of surgical experience or whatever it is then i think that's that's an example of a pure academic policy where maybe you should give more discretion maybe not as much is the universities would want but in this case i think it's really a much more it's not really a policy it's kind of the end result of a complex market process where students so yeah i mean i think that it's a it's a absolutely an area that's important enough to be considered you know under the anti  under free market principles because there are there are very significant affects i think from overstrain of between two schools or more schools and i think that you should seriously consider the fact that the students choice of school is is also very important it's not it's it is i think with this type of policy you are going to always see more of higher prices get him instead of other qualified candidates because the admissions committee consider those candidates more often if you do so for at least three reasons but before you get to those reasons to fully appreciate them and so it's important to understand this case is not about this case is soley about the plaintiff mr peters and his rejection of medical school crucial question really the only question is has he suffered an injury of the type you know i trust laws are designed the district court's opinion and you want below on a very broad ground that there is no any trust scrutiny of the school's decision not only of schools decision of which students to admit but a school's decision of how many students to admit who and how many are now each and how many students to admit or not commercial as i think you know how many is pretty hard to reconcile with modern any of us you can get to the same destination on several paths and we actually identified we have let's talk let's talk about this one so i assume you would agree if all the ivy league medical schools agreed to charge one hundred thousand dollars tuition that naked horizontal price fix would be subject to an interest group clearly commercial ok so suppose instead all the ivy league medical schools agreed to in that way would be subject to the i trust that's not this so why why isn't this complaint aid or the district courts reasoning a variant saying just the opposite so he says the decision regarding how many to admit gets no any interest scrutiny yes he says that but i don't think you need to rest on that inclusion in order to arrive at the same let's talk about his crown before you get to alternative grounds so defending us so we are just spending a portion of that in this respect i do believe that the decision in a zero sum game and then the question and the only relief this point of six of the decision of the admissions committee that someone else is more is not a proper subject for an interest  that's have of what judge hoover concluded and i look and see that he his conclusion was stated in broader terms but if you if you separate the choice of who gets in from how many write it which i think you can do you understand why yes absolutely absolutely and i have some trouble understanding the precise mechanics of how the conspiracy alleged here actually we to and out put restriction but that's a trolley it ball issue and you didn't win on that ground we didn't wait on that ground we raised it and to spec to the court we were confronted with an eight page brief raising one issue on appeal i understand we didn't address it frankly i do think though the court can for any reason and even if the district court was troubled believe he referred to the theory of par that you've identified as highly conjectural counter intuitive and i'm like lee now to your point a good agreement to restrict would be would be reachable sherman right we don't disagree  we think this is completely disconnected from the theory of the entrance injury but rather context does matter and the context here is that emissions committees for americans one hundred and fifty for medical schools perform an exceedingly important task in this most recent application cycle there were nearly nine hundred thousand applications to us medical school and only about twenty two thousand applicants actually  to their respective medical schools the future physicians who will treat you he or children or grandchildren this is very important tasks doctors are not on islands they can they have to work teams you know the doctor in the emergency room when she starts treating me or the trauma specialist or the surgeon when he will be up to the operating room or the intensive care specialist going to care so and all of that have to work together so for this reason in contrast to law schools and most other post graduate programs every medical student would be notable student who a school identifies as a potential  question the exactly question exactly in that case is not separate and i trust injury and rd you do mention the academic deference argument i think that we propose it more as a prevention so i think it's really important to keep the merits of the ne tries claim separate from this appeal because as apple versus pepper which was the direct purpose of rome the supreme court said when you're considering a threshold and you trust issue like th really no occasion to visit the merits i haven't had the chance to put expert testimony before you can explain it's a fairly complex market like this that i think that this it estate is not quite right it's more like ninety thousand maybe applicants four hundred and twenty two thousand spaces but the point is that it's definitely something that falls and then the grounds of the anti trust as far as the specifics of my could your admission and that's actually not the only really provided in the complaint i suggest that there could be money damages various other forms of damages and it's definitely not limited to injunctive relief that's just a statement that legal damages are addict inadequate to justify want to many