Jordan Wyckoff, et al. v. Office of the Commissioner of Baseball, dba Major League Baseball, et al.

In a Sherman Act challenge to Major League Baseball’s “reserve system”—giving a team exclusive, career-long rights to a player—this Court held that the business of baseball is not engaged in interstate commerce and thus not subject to antitrust laws. Federal Baseball Club of Baltimore, Inc. v. Nat’l League of Prof’l Baseball Players, 259 U.S. 200 (1922). Fifty years later, the Court rejected that rationale, holding that “[p]rofessional baseball … is engaged in interstate commerce”; the Court nevertheless preserved baseball’s “reserve system … exemption from the federal antitrust laws” on stare decisis grounds. Flood v. Kuhn, 407 U.S. 258, 282 (1972). Twenty-five years later, Congress abolished the reserve system’s antitrust exemption with enactment of the Curt Flood Act of 1998, Pub. L. No. 105-297, 112 Stat. 2824 (Oct. 27, 1998) (codified at 15 U.S.C. § 26b). Since Federal Baseball, this Court has never examined the scope of the exemption. Despite this Court’s repudiation of the interstate commerce rationale for the “exemption” and Congress’s abolition of the very facet of the business of baseball—the reserve system—that led to its creation and perpetuation, lower courts continue to construe the exemption broadly. And they do so in spite of this Court’s precedents requiring antitrust exemptions to be construed narrowly. In this case, the Second Circuit broadly interpreted the exemption to immunize respondents from a Sherman Act challenge to their antipoaching employment practices of talent scouts. The question presented is: Whether the antitrust “exemption” this Court recognized for baseball’s reserve system extends to Major League Baseball’s employment practices for non-players like baseball scouts?