On June 20, 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review a recent appeals court decision that allowed an antitrust complaint to withstand dismissal based solely on allegations permitting the mere inference of an anticompetitive conspiracy. The case presented a question that had deeply divided federal courts of appeal: whether a plaintiff must plead facts that tend to exclude an innocent explanation for defendants’ parallel conduct to state a plausible antitrust claim. The decision was a setback for WLF, which filed a brief urging review. WLF argued that the appeals court’s holding undermined the Supreme Court’s decision in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, which held that where an equally plausible, non-conspiratorial “alternative explanation” exists for alleged parallel conduct, it is error to allow a complaint to go forward based on a mere inference of conspiracy. WLF’s brief was joined by the Allied Educational Foundation and the International Association of Defense Counsel.