Baseball Antitrust Exemption History
Author: Baseball Bob
What is the history behind baseball’s antitrist exemption and can it be taken away?
I think that if congress was serious about steroids in MLB, then maybe it could revoke the antitrust exemption
Anomalous and rather dumb Supreme Court decision in 1922, determining that since baseball was “not interstate commerce” (despite obvious evidence that it was) it was therefore exempt from anti-trust law.
Major League Baseball therefore has legal standing to operate in collective and/or anti-competitive ways if it wants to do so.
Congress occasionally rattles its sabers about overturning the ATE but, except in limited circumstances (mostly pertaining to labor law, and in which the MLBPA agreed), it never has. Threatening to overturn it is a better lever for getting things done than actually overturning it would be (pure politics, this).
Every time the original 1922 decision has wound up before the Court again, the Court has made it clear that (a) it will not overturn it and (b) it’s up to Congress to do that.
Only Two Industries get an Antitrust exemption; Health Insurance and Baseball