should Major League Baseball be subject to anti-trust laws?

[dead0man]

WAPO

About 99 years and seven months ago, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes and his colleagues issued a ruling that would shape professional baseball in the United States for the next century.

In a now infamous case most often referred to as “Federal Baseball,” the court ruled that professional baseball was exempt from the Sherman Antitrust Act passed three decades earlier, which meant teams could collude to suppress wages and dictate the fortunes of member clubs in ways that would be illegal in other big business spheres.

No other professional sports league was ever granted the same exemption, and the Supreme Court has more than once referred to that Holmes decision as one it would not make again.

Now, a century later, lawyers representing four of the 40 minor league franchises that lost their affiliations with major league teams last year are hoping they have the right case to bait the Supreme Court into ending that exemption once and for all.

<snip>

Before the start of the 2021 season, Major League Baseball took control of minor league operations. It excised 40 of 160 affiliated teams in a broad restructuring that raised standards for facilities and nutrition while ending long-standing relationships between cities and their beloved minor league clubs.

Within a year, relentless public pressure from groups representing players’ interests had convinced MLB to raise minor league pay and institute a requirement that organizations pay for minor leaguers’ housing starting next season. If MLB somehow lost its antitrust exemption, it would probably no longer take steps such as eliminating affiliated teams or dictating the organization of the minor leagues quite so quickly.

And it might just open the door for minor league players to unionize, because MLB would have more incentive to collectively bargain with its minor league employees when it would be subject to antitrust suits for wage suppression and other collectively decided standards than it does now. In collective bargaining, at least, MLB would have some say over the labor standards by which minor leaguers would be governed.