Overview
(August 10, 2026, Washington, DC) - A Massachusetts federal judge has dismissed Steptoe client The Common Application, Inc. (Common App) from a proposed antitrust class action challenging the Early Decision admissions process. Plaintiffs in D'Amico v. Consortium on Financing Higher Education (COFHE) et al. alleged that 32 elite colleges and universities violated the Sherman Act by agreeing with each other not to compete for Early Decision-admitted students. They also sued three non-schools – Common App, Scoir (a software platform providing another application platform), and trade association COFHE – claiming that the non-schools "facilitated" the schools' alleged conspiracy. The court denied the 32 schools' dismissal bid, but dismissed Common App, Scoir, and COFHE from the case because the plaintiffs did not sufficiently allege that those organizations joined or facilitated the alleged conspiracy.
Steptoe represented Common App, which is the leading application platform for undergraduate admissions and which connects well over one million students with approximately 1,200 colleges and universities each year.
The Steptoe team representing Common App included Eric Berman, Lee Berger, Patrick Linehan, Weisiyu Jiang, Alex Wolf, and Brynn Drury. Weisiyu represented the non-school defendants at oral argument.
About Steptoe
In more than 110 years of practice, Steptoe has earned an international reputation for vigorous representation of clients and innovative thinking before governmental agencies, successful advocacy in litigation and arbitration, and creative and practical advice in structuring business transactions. Steptoe has more than 500 lawyers and other professional staff across offices in Beijing, Brussels, Chicago, Hong Kong, Houston, London, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Washington, DC. For more information, visit www.steptoe.com.
