Sometimes, Elections Matter

Under a Republican administration, the Department of Justice would not have filed, much less won, a lawsuit against JetBlue and American Airlines anticompetitive Northeast Alliance.

It may not be the beginning of the end for Robert Bork's corrupt, hypocritical, and ahistorical theory of antitrust, but hopefully it is the end of the beginning for Robert Bork's corrupt, hypocritical, and ahistorical theory of antitrust:

The U.S. Justice Department has won its lawsuit in a Boston courtroom to undo the so-called "Northeast Alliance" partnership between JetBlue Airways and American Airlines.

The decision is a blow to JetBlue, which is Boston Logan Airport's biggest airline. JetBlue operates flights to multiple airports across Massachusetts and New England.

U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin wrote that through their alliance, American and JetBlue carved up Northeast markets between them, "replacing full-throated competition with broad cooperation."

The partnership had the blessing of the Trump administration when it took effect in early 2021. It let the airlines sell seats on each other’s flights and share revenue from them. It covered many of their flights to and from Boston's Logan Airport and three airports in the New York City area: John F. Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark Liberty in New Jersey.

………

The lawsuit, filed in September 2021, said that the airlines’ alliance was effectively a merger that would hurt consumers by driving up fares.

The trial was held last September in Boston, with the decision handed down on Friday.

"The court finds that the plaintiffs have convincingly established that the NEA violates Section 1 of the Sherman Act," the ruling said.

"There is simply no credible evidence that American and JetBlue have continued to treat each other as competitors within the NEA," the decision said.

This is the sort of thing that should have been seen as illegal on its face, but the Federal Judiciary has been loaded up with free market Mousketeers, and so it was by no means a certain thing.

As an aside, in more enlightened days, by which I mean before the Reagan administration, the executives who negotiated these deals would have been criminally charged and frog-marched out of their offices in handcuffs.

It's time to go back to the old ways.