Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/14pdf/13-534_19m2.pdf
Page Number: 30

Cite as:  574 U. S. ____ (2015) 

7 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

counsel,  and  the  legislature  made  any  “notice  or 
statement  of  charges  against  any  licensee”  a  public 
record under state law.  §§ 90–41(d)–(g). 

  The  legislature  empowered  the  Board  “to  enact  rules 
and  regulations  governing  the  practice  of  dentistry
within  the  State,”  consistent  with  relevant  statutes. 
§90–48.  It  has  required  that  any  such  rules  be  in-
cluded in the Board’s annual report, which the Board
must  file  with  the  North  Carolina  secretary  of  state,
the state attorney general, and the legislature’s Joint
Regulatory  Reform  Committee.    §93B–2.  And  if  the 
Board  fails  to  file  the  required  report,  state  law  de-
mands  that  it  be  automatically  suspended  until  it 
does so.  Ibid. 

As  this  regulatory  regime  demonstrates,  North  Caro-
lina’s Board of Dental Examiners is unmistakably a state
agency  created  by  the  state  legislature  to  serve  a  pre-
scribed  regulatory  purpose  and  to  do  so  using  the  State’s
power in cooperation with other arms of state government.
The Board is not a private or “nonsovereign” entity that
the  State  of  North  Carolina  has  attempted  to  immunize 
from federal antitrust scrutiny.  Parker made it clear that 
a State may not “ ‘give immunity to those who violate the 
Sherman  Act  by  authorizing  them  to  violate  it,  or  by  de-
claring  that  their  action  is  lawful.’ ”  Ante,  at  7  (quoting 
Parker, 317 U. S., at 351).  When the Parker Court disap-
proved  of  any  such  attempt,  it  cited  Northern  Securities 
Co. v. United States, 193 U. S. 197 (1904), to show what it 
had  in  mind.    In  that  case,  the  Court  held  that  a  State’s 
act of chartering a corporation did not shield the corpora-
tion’s  monopolizing  activities  from  federal  antitrust  law. 
Id., at 344–345.  Nothing similar is involved here.  North 
Carolina did not authorize a private entity to enter into an
anticompetitive  arrangement;  rather,  North  Carolina 
created  a  state  agency  and  gave  that  agency  the  power  to
regulate  a  particular  subject  affecting  public  health  and