An American Airlines plane lands on a runway near a parked JetBlue plane at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on July 16, 2020, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.A Massachusetts-based federal judge on Friday sided with the Biden administration plus six states and the District of Columbia, which launched an antitrust challenge to American Airlines and JetBlue Airways’ “de facto merger” for Boston and New York City.
The U.S. Department of Justice along with the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Florida, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and D.C.“This case turns on what ‘competition’ means,” U.S. District Court Judge Leo Sorokin, an appointee of former President Barack Obama,Friday. “To the defendants, competition is enhanced if they join forces to unseat a powerful rival. The Sherman Act, however, has a different focus.
“Federal antitrust law is not concerned with making individual competitors larger or more powerful. It aims to preserve the free functioning of markets and foster participation by a diverse array of competitors,” the judge added. “Those principles are generally undermined, rather than promoted, by agreements among horizontal competitors to dispense with competition and cooperate instead. That is precisely what happened here.
A federal judge ruled today that JetBlue and America’s alliance amounted to an illegal merger. Another big win for DOJ Antitrust.