Corey Airport Services finished second in a competition for a five-year advertising concession at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Corey alleged that Atlanta officials favored the winning incumbent and conspired with the incumbent companies to violate Corey's equal-protection rights under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. A jury awarded Corey substantial compensatory and punitive damages, but the Eleventh Circuit vacated the district court's post-verdict refusal to enter judgment as a matter of law. The court held that an equal-protection claim requires discrimination against an identifiable group with substantive characteristics that permit objective definition. Corey instead proposed a group of politically connected insiders and unconnected outsiders who lost the bid. The court found those categories vague, shifting, and dependent on subjective relationships with government officials. It also rejected defining the class simply as companies that lost the bid, because that would convert every discretionary government procurement into a potential equal-protection case. Without an underlying equal-protection violation, the conspiracy claim failed. The court remanded with instructions to enter judgment for the defendants.