Denver, Colo. (January 18, 2022) - A group of
minor league baseball teams have filed suit in the U.S. District
Court for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan against
Major League Baseball (MLB) in a pitch to end a nearly century-old
antitrust exemption first granted by the U.S. Supreme Court in
1922.
The Lawsuit
The suit is based on MLB's decision in 2019 to contract its
minor league system from 160 teams to 120 teams. Charging that no
other business in the U.S. would even consider such a "brazen
horizontal agreement among competing businesses," the minor
league plaintiffs allege that MLB and its clubs had no such qualms
because of a judicially created "get out of jail free
card," or antitrust exemption, first dealt to them by the
Supreme Court in Fed. Baseball Club, Inc. v. Nat'l League
of Prof'l Baseball Clubs, 259 U.S. 200 (1922) and
subsequently reaffirmed in Toolson v. N.Y. Yankees, Inc.,
346 U.S. 356, 356, 74 S. Ct. 78, 78 (1953) and Flood v.
Kuhn,
