By Robert Craig ( April 26, 2018, 1:20 PM EDT) -- In June of 2014, an Alabama federal district court decided not to dismiss a multidistrict class action challenging an alleged horizontal market allocation by the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association and a number of its member plans.[1] That court recently issued a new decision in which the court determined that a long-standing component of the association's business model, the granting of licenses to member plans to use the Blue Cross and Blue Shield trademarks in exclusive geographic markets, is per se anti-competitive.[2] While the court left for trial the question of whether the association is a single entity (and therefore not subject to Section 1 of the Sherman Act), this decision (if upheld) represents a significant threat to the fundamental structure of the association and its members....