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26  NATIONAL COLLEGIATE ATHLETIC ASSN. v. ALSTON 

Opinion of the Court 

based on a voluminous record, the district court held that 
the student-athletes had shown the NCAA enjoys the power 
to set wages in the market for student-athletes’ labor—and 
that the NCAA has exercised that power in ways that have
produced significant anticompetitive effects.  See D. Ct. Op., 
at  1067.  Perhaps  even  more  notably,  the  NCAA  “did  not 
meaningfully dispute” this conclusion.  Ibid. 

Unlike so many cases, then, the district court proceeded 
to the second step, asking whether the NCAA could muster
a procompetitive rationale for its restraints.  Id., at 1070. 
This is where the NCAA claims error first crept in.  On its 
account, the district court examined the challenged rules at
different levels of generality.  At the first step of its inquiry,
the court asked whether the NCAA’s entire package of com-
pensation  restrictions  has  substantial  anticompetitive  ef-
fects collectively.  Yet, at the second step, the NCAA says
the district court required it to show that each of its distinct
rules  limiting  student-athlete  compensation  has  procom-
petitive  benefits  individually.    The  NCAA  says  this  mis-
match  had  the  result  of  effectively—and  erroneously—re-
quiring  it  to  prove  that  each  rule  is  the  least  restrictive 
means of achieving the procompetitive purpose of differen-
tiating college sports and preserving demand for them. 

We  agree  with  the  NCAA’s  premise  that  antitrust  law 
does not require businesses to use anything like the least 
restrictive  means  of  achieving  legitimate  business  pur-
poses.  To the contrary, courts should not second-guess “de-
grees of reasonable necessity” so that “the lawfulness of con-
duct  turn[s]  upon  judgments  of  degrees  of  efficiency.” 
Rothery Storage, 792 F. 2d, at 227; Continental T. V., Inc. v. 
GTE  Sylvania  Inc.,  433  U. S.  36,  58,  n. 29  (1977).    That 
would  be  a  recipe  for  disaster,  for  a  “skilled  lawyer”  will
“have little difficulty imagining possible less restrictive al-
ternatives  to  most  joint  arrangements.”    11  Areeda  & 
Hovenkamp ¶1913b, p. 398 (2018).  And judicial acceptance