Tuesday 28 June 2022 06:51 PM MLB's century-old antitrust exemption is called into question by a bipartisan ... trends now
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The century-old antitrust exemption that allows Major League Baseball to operate a legal monopoly in the United States is being questioned by a bipartisan group of senators, who are seeking to address concerns about the policy's impact on the game and working conditions for minor league players.
On Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee addressed a letter detailing its concerns to Advocates for Minor Leaguers, a group dedicated to improving living and working conditions for minor league players, who are at the mercy of MLB.
The letter was signed by a bipartisan group of senators, including Dick Durbin (Democrat-Illinois), Chuck Grassley (Republican-Iowa), Richard Blumenthal (Democrat-Connecticut) and Mike Lee (Republican-Utah). It marks the federal government's first major move to question the legality of the antitrust exemption, which has been in effect since a 1922 Supreme Court decision. The exemption has since withstood two challenges in the Supreme Court (1953 and 1972) and a separate challenge in 2017 was stopped in the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals.
'We write to seek information about how baseball's antitrust exemption is impacting competition in the labor market for minor league ballplayers as well as the operations of minor league teams,' read the letter.
Durbin, Grassley, Blumenthal and Lee specifically seek to learn how removing the exemption could help minor leaguers, many of whom have lived in cramped conditions on meagre pay while they chase their dreams of playing in the Majors. (MLB did pledge to improve living conditions in 2022 by enacting a housing policy that requires teams to provide furnished accommodations with a single bed per player and no more than two players per bedroom).
The Committee's letter also questions the impact the exemption has on work stoppages, like the owner-enacted lockout that delayed the
