Return To The Past? Congress Seeks To Overturn Leegin

Two years after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its historic decision in Leegin Creative Leather Prods., Inc. v. PSKS, Inc., 127 S. Ct. 2705 (2007), the latest congressional proposal to reverse that decision was introduced by Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee's Courts & Competition Policy Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Henry C. (Hank) Johnson, Jr. (D-Ga.) and the full Committee's Chairman Rep. John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.) on July 13, 2009. The Discount Pricing Consumer Protection Act of 2009 would restore the rule that agreements between manufacturers and retailers, distributors, or wholesalers to set the price below which the manufacturer's product or service cannot be sold are a per se violation of the Sherman Act. While the bill is not an exact duplicate or "companion" bill to a measure (S.148) introduced by Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) in January 2009, the Johnson-Conyers legislation has the same intent.