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ARTICLE · 15 MAY 2018

Will Supreme Court Review Challenges To Baseball Antitrust Exemption?

Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo, P.C.
Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo, P.C.
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Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo, P.C.

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You don't think of sports website FanGraphs as a go-to source for legal analysis. But in a provocative April 30th post by Nathaniel Grow...

United StatesAntitrust/Competition Law

You don't think of sports website FanGraphs as a go-to source for legal analysis. But in a provocative April 30th post by Nathaniel Grow, https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-supreme-court-might-reconsider-mlbs-antitrust-exemption/, it was suggested that maybe—just maybe—the Supreme Court might be winding up to reexamine baseball's anomalous antitrust exemption.

Baseball's judicially-created antitrust exemption is now nearly 100 years ago. Federal Baseball Club v. National League, 259 U.S. 200 (1922). Justice Holmes' opinion has stood the test of time. The Court held that baseball is not engaged in a business in interstate commerce—it's the national pastime. Justice Blackmun's opening section, delineating all the baseball greats, in the 1972 opinion Flood v. Kuhn, 407 U.S. 258 (1972) upholding the exemption, could be envisioned read aloud by James Earl Jones in "Field Of Dreams."

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