AHA sends letter supporting FTC chairman’s position on bringing merger challenges to federal court

The AHA Febb 24 commended recent remarks made by Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson on Feb. 20, in which he said the commission should bring merger challenges directly to federal court rather than handling them through its in-house adjudicatory process. The AHA said it has long agreed with Ferguson’s position, and that bringing merger challenges to Article III courts would provide credibility to the FTC’s merger enforcement. The AHA added that it agreed with the chairman’s comments that litigating merger challenges in federal court would both “avoid the constitutional challenges every time you bring a merger case ... and ... align with the standard that the Department of Justice has to comply with in order to get an injunction of a merger.” The AHA recommended that the FTC amend its own regulations to codify that approach.  
  
“A new regulation, enacted through notice-and-comment rulemaking, not only would be consistent with your preferred practice, but it would bind future Administrations,” the AHA wrote. “Because, as you said, ‘it’s basically how the merger cases have been going’ in this Administration, and because we too do not see ‘any other reason why we ought not to do it now,’ we urge the FTC to promulgate such a rule.”