Antitrust Law Daily Wrap Up, VITAL BRIEFING: Will the U.S. Supreme Court finally overturn the ‘business of baseball’ antitrust exemption?, (Nov 7, 2025)

By Jeffrey May, J.D.

Federal lawmakers, MLB, academics urge High Court to address application of antitrust laws to baseball.

Despite the best efforts of the U.S. Supreme Court to avoid reconsidering its own “business of baseball” antitrust exemption in recent decades, calls for clarification or outright reversal of the judicially-created exemption continue. The Court first recognized an exemption for the business of baseball exemption in its 1922 decision in Federal Baseball Club of Baltimore v. National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs (259 U.S. 200 (1922)). It last considered the exemption more than 50 years ago in Flood v. Kuhn (407 U.S. 258 (1972)), where the exemption for Major League Baseball (MLB) was preserved. However, in the Flood decision, the Court left for Congress the responsibility for clarifying the scope of the exemption. Although Congress in 1998 eventually passed the Curt Flood Act, which repealed the exemption as it applied to labor disputes involving MLB players, it left open questions about minor league players and teams. It has been argued that the exemption and the federal legislation that followed created confusion over how federal antitrust law is applied in the context of professional baseball. Now, the Court once again has been presented with an opportunity for addressing the exemption.

Pending questions. More than a half dozen petitions calling on the High Court to clarify or overturn the baseball antitrust exemption have been rejected by the Court since the decision in Flood v. Kuhn. At the start of the current term, the Supreme Court turned away one of these petitions. Former minor league baseball players asked for review of a First Circuit panel decision, affirming dismissal in their wage fixing case against the Commissioner of Baseball and the constituent Major League Baseball Clubs. After the denial of certiorari, the players filed with the Court a petition for rehearing in their quest to overturn the “103-year-old error” of Federal Baseball Club (Concepcion v. Office of the Commissioner of Baseball, Dkt. No. 25-199).

The rehearing petition followed another petition for review of the exemption filed by the former owner/operator of a Puerto Rico baseball team whose antitrust claims against the “only top-tier professional baseball league in Puerto Rico” and other league franchises were dismissed on the basis of the baseball exemption. The First Circuit affirmed. The team owner unsuccessfully alleged that he was forced to relinquish his control over and interest in the franchise in violation of the Sherman Act claims. The complaining former team owner/operator sought reversal by the Supreme Court and clarification of the exemption's limits (Cangrejeros De Santurce Baseball CLUB, LLC v. Liga De Béisbol Profesional De Puerto Rico, Inc., Dkt. No. 24-416).

According to the petition for rehearing in the Concepcion case, “the pending Cangrejeros petition and [the rehearing] petition make clear that the issue of the validity of the ‘business of baseball’ exemption is an ongoing problem that is not going away and will continue to vex the courts until this Court grants certiorari and overturns the entirety of the exemption it created."

The petition in Cangrejeros states that even if the Federal Baseball Club exemption is not overruled, “review still would be warranted to clarify the exemption’s proper scope and bring uniformity to its application by the lower courts.”

Support for Supreme Court review. The chorus for addressing the exemption has grown louder. Senate leaders, academics, and MLB itself have weighed in, supporting the petitioners’ request for the Court to take up their case.

Senate antitrust subcommittee leaders. The top lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee filed a friend-of-the court brief in the Cangrejeros case. Senators Mike Lee (R., Utah) and Cory Booker (D., N.J.), the chair and ranking members of the antitrust subcommittee, urged the Court to overturn the long-standing precedent preserving the exemption. They contended that “rigid application of stare decisis to preserve an admittedly incorrect decision should not stand.” They also argued that it is the Court and not Congress should act to fix a mistaken interpretation of the law in this case. “[T]his Court can and should fix its own mistake,” the senators asserted.

“For a century, professional baseball has been shielded from antitrust laws by a court-created exemption that this Court acknowledges rests on incorrect legal reasoning, the senators continued. “This anomaly flouts basic constitutional principles by allowing a judicial mistake to stand above the law and undermine the separation of powers.”

Professors and law experts. A group of professors and experts in the fields of antitrust, business, and sports law also weighed in. In their brief, also supporting the petitioners, the academics contended that the exemption from the beginning in 1922 has “led to a morass of confusion” and that the attempted fix by Congress in 1998 “only added to the confusion.”

They take the position that courts have interpreted the exemption differently, with some courts reading it broadly to “encompass virtually any aspect of an organized baseball league that is reasonably connected to the ‘business of baseball,’” while other courts limiting it to MLB’s now-obsolete reserve clause. The result, they say, is “a patchwork of inconsistent law around the country—one that leaves plaintiffs flailing wildly in their attempts to guess which baseball leagues may avail themselves of the exemption and what anticompetitive conduct, if any, they can reasonably challenge.”

The professors also suggest that MLB uses “the baseball exemption as both a sword and a shield, selectively wielding it in situations where it seems unlikely to be limited by a court.” They point to “litigation gamesmanship” by the league.

They concluded by asking the Court to “take the opportunity that [the Cangrejeros] case presents to confirm whether the baseball exemption should remain an anomaly among the otherwise uniform application of antitrust law to sports leagues and, if so, to clarify the exemption’s scope and prevent lower courts from allowing it to creep into new areas that even the broadest reading of this Court’s precedent would not permit.”

MLB Players Association’s views. A friend-of-the-court brief also was filed by the MLB Players Association. The group called on the Court to “correct its mistake and overturn the baseball exemption, or in the alternative, limit the exemption to the precise context in which it arose.” MLB contended that, “even if stare decisis could have saved a narrow version of the baseball exemption in the past, the First Circuit’s expansion of the exemption warrants reversal.”

The group also took the position that neither the history nor the text of the Curt Flood Act of 1998 lend support for the exemption. “The Act’s text expressly states that it should not be interpreted to have any implications beyond elimination of the antitrust exemption in the market for Major League players’ services,” it was noted.

“Eliminating the exemption would have pro-competitive benefits in the baseball industry, MLB concluded.

The Court must now decide whether to take the advice of this diverse group of advocates and grant review.

The Cases are No. 25-199 and 25-416.

Attorneys: Samuel Kornhauser (Law Offices of Samuel Kornhauser) for Daniel Concepcion. Robert Adam Lauridsen (Keker, Van Nest & Peters LLP) for Office of the Comm'r of Baseball. Jeffrey L. Kessler (Winston & Strawn LLP) for Cangrejeros de Santurce Club, LLC. Deanne Elizabeth Maynard (Morrison & Foerster LLP) for Senators Mike Lee and Cory Booker. Gregory Silbert (Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP) for Major League Baseball Players Assn. Aaron Moise Steeg (Barrasso Usdin Kupperman Freeman & Sarver, LLC) for Antitrust, Business, and Sports Law Professors.

Companies: Cangrejeros de Santurce Club, LLC; Liga de Béisbol Professional de Puerto Rico, Inc.; Major League Baseball Players Assn

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