49 U.S.C. § 41308
Section 41308 · Exemption from the antitrust laws
Amended 1 time on record
Applied in 3 court decisions — leading case 871 F. Supp. 2d 143 - DPWN Holdings (USA), Inc. v. United Air Lines, Inc. (2012)
Most recently applied in Wortman v. All Nippon Airways (April 2017)
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year.Markers show enactment, consequential amendments, and circuit splits over this section — watch for a citation surge after a change or a disagreement. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
(a) Definition.—In this section, “antitrust laws” has the same meaning given that term in the first section of the Clayton Act (15 U.S.C. 12).
(b) Exemption Authorized.—When the Secretary of Transportation decides it is required by the public interest, the Secretary, as part of an order under section 41309 or 42111 of this title, may exempt a person affected by the order from the antitrust laws to the extent necessary to allow the person to proceed with the transaction specifically approved by the order and with any transaction necessarily contemplated by the order.
(c) Exemption Required.—In an order under section 41309 of this title approving an agreement, request, modification, or cancellation, the Secretary, on the basis of the findings required under section 41309(b)(1), shall exempt a person affected by the order from the antitrust laws to the extent necessary to allow the person to proceed with the transaction specifically approved by the order and with any transaction necessarily contemplated by the order.
Editorial notes U.S. Code · Office of the Law Revision Counsel
Subsection (a) is substituted for “the ‘anti-trust laws’ set forth in subsection (a) of section 12 of title 15” for consistency in the revised title and with other titles of the United States Code.
In subsection (b), reference to 49 App.:1378 and 1379 is omitted as obsolete.