Bay Guardian Company v. Chronicle Publishing Company

ORDER DENYING MOTION TO STRIKE ANSWER

This action may best be described as one to test the constitutionality of the Newspaper Preservation Act ( 15 U.S.C. §§ 1801-04 ), (henceforth Act), which was passed July 24, 1970. The Act grants a special limited exemption from the antitrust laws to certain types of newspapers. Originally the plaintiffs sought in one section of their complaint a declaratory judgment that the Act was unconstitutional. This Court found in an order dated February 24, 1972, 340 F. S,upp. 76, that such an action could not be maintained for technical jurisdiction al reasons. Now the defendants have answered the antitrust portions of the complaint by asserting the Act in two affirmative defenses to those claims.

The plaintiffs have now moved to strike those defenses on the ground that the Act is unconstitutional on its face and as applied.

The defendants since September, 1965, have operated under a joint operating agreement. By that agreement one newspaper (News-Call-Bulletin) was put out of existence while the two remaining dailies (Examiner and Chronicle) were allotted the afternoon and morning markets respectively. All printing is done by a jointly owned…