DOJ chief wades into dental antitrust case in rare intervention
The antitrust chief of the US Justice Department (DOJ) made a rare appearance in court when he requested that the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reject a defence used by a medical and dental board against an antitrust lawsuit.
In a case filed by SmileDirectClub against members of the Alabama Dental Board, Makan Delrahim, assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s Antitrust Division, delivered oral arguments in the court yesterday, July 8.
SmileDirectClub, which produces 3D-printed teeth aligners, accused the board of improperly stopping it from operating in Alabama to protect the interests of other dental companies.
The board members applied for immunity, on the basis they are acting in the state’s interests, which was denied by the US Federal Court for the Northern District of Alabama.
The board appealed this decision, prompting the intervention by the DOJ.
Delrahim argued that allowing the board members to circumvent the suit would lead to a dramatic widening of the scope of this state-action immunity defence.
He said: “If every state board is treated as an act of the sovereign merely because the rule was adopted pursuant to a general statutory mandate or by following state law procedures that would swallow, we believe, impermissibly the Supreme Court’s direction in dental examiners.”
SmileDirectClub claims that the Alabama board has failed to show a level of state supervision that would allow state-action immunity.
