Price-Fixing Makes Comeback After Supreme Court Ruling

BY JOSEPH PEREIRA

(See Corrections & Amplifications item below.)

Manufacturers are embracing broad new legal powers that amount to a type of price-fixing -- enabling them to set minimum prices on their products and force retailers to refrain from discounting.

For the better part of a century, punishing retailers for selling at cut-rate prices was an automatic violation of antitrust law. However, a Supreme Court ruling last year involving handbag sales at a Dallas mom-and-pop store, Kay's Kloset, upended that original 1911 precedent, potentially altering the face of U.S. discount retailing.

Retailers say an array of manufacturers now require them to abide by ...