Pennsylvania Court Dismisses Antitrust Claims Against Law School Admission Council
06/09/2026
On April 28, 2026, Judge John Murphy of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania granted a motion to dismiss a putative class action, holding that lead plaintiff’s allegations were implausible, and dismissed all three claims without prejudice, allowing plaintiff to file an amended complaint addressing the deficiencies identified in the opinion “if the facts allow.” Risner v. Law School Admission Council, Inc., 2:25-cv-04461-JFM (E.D. Pa. Aug. 4, 2025).
Plaintiff asserted a putative national class of law school applicants who purchased a subscription to the LSAC’s application service, the Common Application. Plaintiff alleged that defendants, including the Law School Admissions Council (“LSAC”) and its 197 ABA-approved member law schools, conspired to fix the price of law school application fees, and that the LSAC maintained a monopoly in violation of Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act. Defendants moved to dismiss the complaint, emphasizing the procompetitive benefits for both law schools and applicants, and arguing that the alleged conduct was unilateral price setting, not a conspiracy. The Court also assessed whether the conspiracy allegations would best be analyzed under the per se, quick look, or rule of reason test. The Court determined that the rule of reason was the appropriate framework to evaluate plaintiff’s allegations due to the complexity of the alleged horizontal and vertical restraints and procompetitive benefits offered by defendants.
To plead a conspiracy claim under Section 1 of the Sherman Act, a plaintiff must plausibly allege (1) the existence of an agreement or “some form of concerted action” which demonstrates a “unity of purposes or a common design and understanding or a meeting of the minds or a conscious commitment to a common scheme” and (2) that the agreement constitutes an unreasonable restraint of trade. See In re Insurance Brokerage Antitrust Litig., 618 F.3d 300, 314-315 (3d Cir. 2010). Defendants argued that the complaint failed to plausibly allege concerted action because plaintiff’s allegation that the LSAC sets prices at the direction of the member law schools is conclusory and that a single entity cannot conspire with itself. However, the Court disagreed with defendants, finding that LSAC’s claims that the alleged conduct was lawful price setting activity to be “an incomplete picture of the relevant allegations.” The Court found plaintiff had sufficiently alleged the concerted action namely by demonstrating that the member law schools control LSAC through the election of its trustees in order to receive kickbacks and free access to the LSAC application platform, and further, many law schools independently operated application processes in the manner alleged by plaintiffs prior to joining LSAC.
Despite holding that plaintiff had antitrust standing and sufficiently alleged concerted action, the Court found the complaint was deficient when it came to defining relevant markets. Plaintiff first alleged a market for “J.D. education,” based on the fact that all member law schools confer J.D. degrees. The Court found this insufficient and adopted defendants’ position that this market definition does not address the degree of interchangeability or cross-elasticity of demand among law schools. Plaintiff also attempted to define a market for law school application software, but the Court found the pleadings regarding this alleged market were so contradictory that dismissal was warranted. For example, plaintiff simultaneously attempted to define the market as any platform that could support law school applications, while also alleging other application platforms were inadequate substitutes. Therefore, plaintiff’s claim regarding monopolization of the application software market also failed.
When defining relevant markets, extra care should be taken to make sure the pleadings and facts do not contradict themselves and that cross-elasticity and substitutability of products or services is addressed in the complaint. While the Court acknowledged that the lawsuit “is not without its merits,” the complaint could not survive defendants’ motion to dismiss because plaintiff failed to sufficiently define the alleged markets. The decision highlights the importance of fully pleading each element of an allegation in a complaint.
