Smile! The Dentists Lose a Monopoly

Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled (6:3) in North Carolina State Board of Dental Examiners v. FTC that the attempt of the state board of dental examiners to exclude nondentists from the practice of teeth whitening violated the Sherman antitrust act.

mouth1The opinion, written by Justice Kennedy, is especially lucid. Here, from Kennedy, are the key facts:

Starting in 2006, the Board issued at least 47 cease-and desist letters on its official letterhead to nondentist teeth whitening service providers and product manufacturers. Many of those letters directed the recipient to cease “all activity constituting the practice of dentistry”; warned that the unlicensed practice of dentistry is a crime; and strongly implied (or expressly stated) that teeth whitening constitutes “the practice of dentistry.” App. 13, 15. In early 2007, the Board persuaded the North Carolina Board of Cosmetic Art Examiners to warn cosmetologists against providing teeth whitening services. Later that year, the Board sent letters to mall operators, stating that kiosk teeth whiteners were violating the Dental Practice Act and advising that the malls consider expelling violators from their premises.

These actions had the intended result. Nondentists ceased offering teeth whitening services in North Carolina.

The FTC then brought suit, arguing that the action was anti-competitive. The case raises constitutional issues because the states are allowed to violate the federal antitrust acts, as will inevitably happen in the ordinary use of their powers. The question then became whether the NC State Dental Board was invested with enough state authority to overcome the antitrust provisions. On the one hand, the principles of federalism say leave the states alone. On the other (Kennedy quoting Justice Stevens in Hoover v. Ronwin):

“The risk that private regulation of market entry, prices, or output may be designed to confer monopoly profits on members of an industry at the expense of the consuming public has been the central concern of . . . our antitrust jurisprudence.”

In my view, the majority deftly navigated the tradeoff. The court said that North Carolina can, without question, decide that teeth whitening is the practice of dentistry but they have to do so more or less explicitly–they can’t simply put the fox in charge of the hen-house by deferring the decision to the dentists.

In other words, the court raised the cost of rent-seeking. If the dentists want to monopolize the practice of teeth whitening they will have to make that case to the legislature and not rely on the unilateral actions of a board composed almost entirely of dentists and created for entirely different purposes.

As Kennedy put it in language reminiscent of bootleggers and baptists:

Limits on state-action immunity are most essential when the State seeks to delegate its regulatory power to active market participants, for established ethical standards may blend with private anticompetitive motives in a way difficult even for market participants to discern. Dual allegiances are not always apparent to an actor. In consequence, active market participants cannot be allowed to regulate their own markets free from antitrust accountability.

Addendum: I, along with a number of other GMU scholars, was part of an Institute for Justice BRIEF OF AMICI CURIAE SCHOLARS OF PUBLIC CHOICE ECONOMICS IN SUPPORT OF RESPONDENT. Congratulations are due to the excellent team at IJ, as the brief seems to have been influential.

By the way, the dissenting opinion (Alito, Scalia, Thomas) appears to accept the logic of our brief to an even greater extent, so much so that they shrug their shoulders at the rent seeking as business as usual (I especially enjoyed the dig at the FTC as also being subject to regulatory capture). Thus, the dissenters focused entirely on the federalism question. I respect that approach but I think that as federalism stands today, the majority’s balancing approach is likely to lead to better policy.

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