Opinion ID: 8407613
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Village’s Immunity — Redux

Text: We now return to the question we left unanswered in Part II.C., above: whether the Village’s immunity, like the Board’s, depends upon a showing that the Board is actively supervised. As we indicated, we are unaware of an opinion of the Supreme Court or of this Court that has squarely addressed this issue. We note that the Supreme Court has never held that a state’s failure to supervise a regulated private party can deprive the state of immunity under Parker, even though such a failure can result in liability for the private party. The federalism-based concerns underlying state immunity from an antitrust action seem to us less pressing in this case than in the immunity cases the Court and we have decided, however, in part because the Village is not a sovereign, and in part because the plaintiff seeks only injunctive and declaratory relief against the Village. An injunction might be an appropriate device for blocking municipal regulatory regimes that result in significant anticompet-itive action by private parties and that constitute nothing more than a “gauzy cloak of state involvement.” Midcal, 445 U.S. at 106,100 S.Ct. 937. But the question of the need for an injunction will arise in this case only if the district court ultimately determines that the Board is not actively supervised and thus not immune, and that there has in fact been a violation of the antitrust laws. We therefore decline to decide this issue since it may prove unnecessary to the disposition of the case. If the district court determines on remand that supervision is lacking, that antitrust violations have occurred, and that a damages award against the Board would be inadequate to deter future harms, it may consider for the first time whether the Parker antitrust immunity doctrine would allow an injunction to issue against the Village even though the Village’s actions were authorized by the state.