In Parker v. Brown, 317 U.S. 341, the Supreme Court held that states were immune from the federal antitrust laws. This doctrine, known as state action immunity, is based on the theory that states acting in their capacities as sovereigns should not be subject to the federal antitrust laws out of respect for federalism. As originally formulated in Parker, state action immunity only applied if the specific anticompetitive activity at issue was directed or compelled by the state. Subsequent cases have relaxed the requirements for the immunity to apply, however. In California Retail Liquor Dealers Assn. v. Midcal Aluminum, Inc., 445 U.S. 97 (1980), the Court held that the challenged restraint should be a clearly articulated and affirmatively expressed state policy, actively supervised by the state, and that mere authorization by the state, as opposed to compulsion, constituted sufficient clear articulation. In Town of Hallie v. City of Eau Claive, 471 U.S. 34 (1985), the Court further expanded the scope of state action immunity holding that the anticompetitive activity need only be a "foreseeable result" of the state statute to satisfy the clear articulation requirement and that active supervision is not required if municipalities or other public entities are involved. In City of Columbia v. Omni Outdoor Advertising, 499 U.S. 365 (1991), the Court applied the foreseeable result standard to immunize restrictions on the construction of billboards imposed by a city, allegedly for the purpose of preserving the monopoly position of an incumbent, based on the state's grant of zoning authority to the city. The Court reasoned that zoning laws inherently involve the displacement of competition and, as such, harm to competition was a foreseeable result of the state's grant of zoning authority to the city. Thus, although lower courts have varied somewhat in how they have interpreted these precedents, there appears to have been a distinct trend since Parker to expand the scope of state action immunity by finding clear articulation in broad or general grants of authority to act by states.
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