Major League Baseball’s century-old antitrust exemption is “of dubious validity” and should not be expanded by the courts, the Biden administration argued in a legal case by a group of minor league teams.
(Bloomberg) — Major League Baseball’s century-old antitrust exemption is “of dubious validity” and should not be expanded by the courts, the Biden administration argued in a legal case by a group of minor league teams.
The US Justice Department on Tuesday submitted a friend-of-the-court brief in a suit by the Staten Island Yankees and three other teams that were put out of business when MLB restructured its relationship to its farm system.
The minor league clubs lost their court challenge to the restructuring and are appealing to the federal appeals court in Manhattan.
“The United States files this brief to reaffirm, as the Supreme Court has said, that courts should ‘not extend’” the 1922 high court ruling that created for baseball an immunity from federal antitrust laws, government lawyers said in the brief.
That 1922 decision has never been extended to other professional sports and has been criticized by lawmakers and legal experts over the years. Despite upholding the exemption, the Supreme Court has echoed some of the criticisms, saying in 1957 that it “at best was of dubious validity.”
The teams claim the realignment, which reduced the number of minor league clubs from 160 to 120, harms competition.
But because baseball’s exemption was created by the Supreme Court and reaffirmed twice in the decades since, it is controlling on lower courts, including the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York.
It can be dislodged only by the Supreme Court itself or by a new law passed by Congress.
Antitrust experts have said the minor league teams are unlikely to win their appeal in the Manhattan-based court, but that an attempt to bring their arguments before the Supreme Court is likely.
The case is Nostalgic Partners v.
Office of the Commissioner of Baseball, 22-2859, 2d US Circuit Court of Appeals (Manhattan).
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