In Auraria Student Housing v. Campus Village Apartments LLC, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit held that a private party may not immediately appeal a district court’s denial of an argument that the state-action doctrine exempts the defendant’s conduct from antitrust scrutiny.
Auraria Student Housing sued its competitor in the Denver housing market, Campus Village, alleging that the defendant’s agreement with the University of Colorado to provide freshman lodging monopolized Denver’s student housing market. The defendant responded that because state policy authorized its housing arrangement with the school, the agreement was exempt from antitrust scrutiny under the antitrust state action doctrine, also known as the Parker doctrine. The district court denied the defense on the ground that the student housing arrangement would not have been sufficiently foreseeable to those who adopted the relevant state policy to trigger the exemption.
Campus Village, with support from precedent in other circuits, sought to file an interlocutory appeal. But the Tenth Circuit held that it lacked jurisdiction to address the issue because it did not constitute a final decision. Although the collateral order doctrine empowers appellate courts to immediately review some issues, a denial of a state-action exemption did not fall within that category. “Extending the collateral order doctrine to private parties contesting an order denying Parker immunity,” the panel concluded, “does not serve a substantial public interest and would constitute precisely the type of expansion the doctrine discourages.”