Merrick Garland's scholarly work on antitrust and state action is super solid. And prescient! He correctly saw back in 1987 that in the wrong hands, antitrust could become a deregulatory tool--a new Lochner.

A bit of background on what he's talking about here:

Back in the day, the laissez-faire Supreme Court was notorious for striking down progressive regulations that (supposedly) interfered with “freedom of contract.”

The most famous example was Lochner v. New York, a decision that invalidated a state law capping maximum hours per week for bakery employees. So that era of caselaw became known as the infamous “Lochner Era.”

Eventually FDR got so fed up that he threatened to pack the Court with progressive justices. The four especially laissez faire justices (a/k/a the "Four Horsemen") caved and repudiated the Lochner line of cases. State/local governments were again (more) free to act.

Where does antitrust come in? Federal antitrust laws could potentially preempt/displace a ton of state and local regs. (“These interfere with competition, so they conflict with our competition-promoting federal antitrust laws.”)

The thing that prevents this from happening is antitrust's “state action doctrine,” which carves out space for state and local governments to act.

Garland was worried that that doctrine would be weakened, and that antitrust would be used to override state/local activity. Basically Lochner all over again, except with federal antitrust laws in place of “freedom of contract”.

This is especially interesting because there’s been a bipartisan consensus for awhile in favor of fed antitrust enforcers cracking down on state/local activity, esp. state licensing boards (e.g., “[State X] Board of Dentistry”). The FTC in particular has been active.

Garland’s position in this article would seem to be that that’s a misuse of federal power, or at the very least that it shouldn't be an enforcement priority.