Senators ask minor leaguers for information on MLB antitrust

WASHINGTON — The chairman and ranking minority member of the Senate Judiciary Committee sent a letter to an advocacy group for minor leaguers asking questions about baseball’s antitrust exemption. The senators asked for information on “the impact of the antitrust exemption on the negotiation of minor league players’ length of contract, wages, housing or other working conditions.” Baseball’s antitrust exemption was created by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 1922 case involving the Federal League, when Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote in a decision that baseball was not interstate commerce but exhibitions exempt from antitrust laws. The Curt Flood Act of 1998, which President Bill Clinton signed, applies antitrust laws to MLB affecting the employment of major league players at the major league level. The U.S. Justice Department filed a statement of interest this month in a lawsuit filed by four minor league teams urging that “lower courts should limit the `baseball exemption’ to conduct that is central to the business of offering professional baseball games to the public.” The lawsuit, by teams that lost their big league affiliations when MLB cut the minors before the 2021 season, is pending in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.