Recent Guidance On the ‘State Supervision’ Requirement
By Frank Trainor
Ever since the United States Supreme Court handed down its decision in North Carolina State Board of Dental Examiners v. FTC, 1235 S. Ct. 1101 (2015), occupational licensing boards have struggled to discern what constitutes adequate “state supervision” over their activities in order to retain state action immunity. The Supreme Court did not provide much guidance on what is expected of that supervisor or what that supervisor should look like. However, it did state that “the supervisor must review the substance of the anticompetitive decision, not merely the procedures followed to produce it [and] the supervisor must have the power to veto or modify particular decisions to ensure they accord with state policy … however, the adequacy of supervision otherwise will depend on all the circumstances of a case.”