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Who Exempted Baseball, Anyway?: The Curious Development Of The Antitrust Exemption That Never Was, Mitchell J. Nathanson

Mitchell J Nathanson

This article takes a fresh look at baseball’s alleged antitrust exemption and explains why, after all, the exemption is alleged rather than actual. For contrary to popular opinion, this article concludes that the Supreme Court’s 1922 Federal Baseball Club decision did not exempt Organized Baseball from federal antitrust laws. Instead, the opinion was much more limited in scope and never reached the question of whether Organized Baseball should be treated differently than other, similarly situated businesses or institutions, although Organized Baseball clearly invited the Justices to make this determination in its brief to the Court. As this article discusses, the …