Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/17pdf/16-1454_5h26.pdf
Page Number: 27

Cite as:  585 U. S. ____ (2018) 

3 

BREYER, J., dissenting 

ed. 1986)). 

Second  (as  treatise  writers  summarize  the  case  law),  if 
an  antitrust  plaintiff  meets  the  initial  burden  of  showing 
that an agreement will likely have anticompetitive effects, 
normally the “burden shifts to the defendant to show that 
the  restraint  in  fact  serves  a  legitimate  objective.”    7 
Areeda  &  Hovenkamp  ¶1504b,  at  415;  see  California 
Dental Assn. v. FTC, 526 U. S. 756, 771 (1999); id., at 788 
(BREYER, J., dissenting). 

Third,  if  the  defendant  successfully  bears  this  burden, 
the  antitrust  plaintiff  may  still  carry  the  day  by  showing 
that  it  is  possible  to  meet  the  legitimate  objective  in  less 
restrictive  ways,  or,  perhaps  by  showing  that  the  legiti­
mate  objective  does  not  outweigh  the  harm  that  competi­
tion  will  suffer,  i.e.,  that  the  agreement  “on  balance”  re­
mains  unreasonable.  7  Areeda  &  Hovenkamp  ¶1507a, 
at 442. 

Like the Court of Appeals and the parties, the majority
addresses only the first step of that three-step framework. 
Ante, at 10. 

II
 
A 

This  case  concerns  the  credit-card  business.    As  the 
majority  explains,  ante,  at  2,  that  business  involves  the 
selling  of  two  different  but  related  card  services.    First, 
when a shopper uses a credit card to buy something from a 
participating merchant, the credit-card company pays the
merchant  the  amount  of  money  that  the  merchant’s  cus­
tomer has charged to his card and charges the merchant a 
fee, say 5%, for that speedy-payment service.  I shall refer 
to  that  kind  of  transaction  as  a  merchant-related  card 
service.  Second, the credit-card company then sends a bill 
to  the  merchant’s  customer,  the  shopper  who  holds  the 
card; and the shopper pays the card company the sum that
merchant charged the shopper for the goods or services he