Toolson v. New York Yankees
Encyclopedia
Toolson v. New York Yankees
(346 U.S. 356
) is a 1953 U.S. Supreme Court
decision that upheld, 7–2, the antitrust exemption first granted to Major League Baseball
(MLB) three decades earlier in Federal Baseball Club v. National League
. It was also the first challenge to the reserve clause
which prevented free agency
, and one of the first cases heard and decided by the Warren Court
.
Since it presumed that Congress
's failure to act in the years since Federal Baseball Club was an implicit expression of intent to keep baseball exempt from the Sherman Antitrust Act
, it has been read as having done more to create that exemption than the older case. Two justices (Stanley Forman Reed
and Harold Hitz Burton
) dissented from the short, unsigned per curiam majority opinion
, arguing MLB and its revenue sources had changed enough since 1922 that the logic of that case no longer applied. In 1972, a third justice (William O. Douglas
) would express his regret at having joined the majority when Toolson was again upheld in the similar Flood v. Kuhn
.
for the Newark Bears
, a farm team for the New York Yankees
in the AAA
-class International League
. He believed he was good enough to play in the major leagues, if not for the Yankees then for another team. But due to the reserve clause
in his and every other player's contract, under which teams reserved rights to a player for a year after the contract expired, he was effectively bound to the talent-rich Yankees and could not negotiate a new contract with another team.
When the Newark franchise was dissolved prior to the 1950 season, he was demoted by the Yankees' organization to the Binghamton Triplets
, an A-class team within its minor league
system. He refused to report and instead filed suit, arguing the reserve clause was a restraint of trade
and that baseball should not be exempt from antitrust laws.
had held for a unanimous court in Federal Baseball Club that professional baseball did not meet the definition of interstate commerce under the Constitution
and the Sherman Act because, although teams traveled between states from game to game, that travel was "incidental" to the business and not an essential aspect, since all the revenue was generated from the actual games.
By the time Toolson filed his suit, baseball had grown greatly in popularity and as such had changed. Improved roads and public transportation meant that fans in some areas crossed state lines to attend games, and radio and television broadcasts, which the teams made money from, brought those games to the fans who did not leave home. The interstate aspects of the professional game had greatly increased.
A few years earlier, commissioner of baseball
Happy Chandler
had been sued by former New York Giants
outfielder
Danny Gardella
, who argued that the five-year ban Chandler imposed on players who, like Gardella, had jumped briefly to the rival Mexican League was an unfair use of monopoly power and that Federal Baseball Club no longer applied. After an initial ruling in favor of baseball was overturned by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals
, who ruled that the case could go to trial, Chandler settled with Gardella for a reported $65,000 in 1949 (Gardella had sought $300,000) since his lawyers had advised him he would not win at the Supreme Court.
In 1951, Brooklyn
congressman
Emanuel Celler
, an advocate for strong antitrust enforcement, had chaired a special Judiciary Committee
subcommittee on monopoly power, which had looked into baseball, among other things. It had been strongly critical, but took no action because of the pending court cases from other Mexican League players.
and the Ninth Circuit
relied on Federal Baseball Club in ruling for the defendants. The Supreme Court granted certiorari
to hear it and consider a number of other cases by former Mexican League players pending at the appellate level.
Among the lawyers working on the case for baseball was Bowie Kuhn
, then of the prestigious firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher
, who would later himself become baseball commissioner and the respondent
in Flood v. Kuhn
, the next case to challenge the reserve clause. When the case reached the Supreme Court, the Boston Red Sox
filed an amicus curiae
brief in support of the Yankees, their bitter rival
. Since the Second Circuit
, in reinstating Gardella's challenge, had called Federal Baseball "an impotent zombie" in light of recent Supreme Court antitrust decisions, baseball did not expect the Court to rule in its favor.
, joined by Stanley Forman Reed
.
subcommittee that had come to a similar conclusion.
He conceded "the major asset which baseball is to our Nation, the high place it enjoys in the hearts of our people, and the possible justification of special treatment for organized sports which are engaged in interstate trade or commerce". But while it was certainly within Congress's power to repeal or specifically enact an antitrust exemption for baseball, it had not done so, "and no court has demonstrated the existence of an implied exemption from that Act of any sport that is so highly organized as to amount to an interstate monopoly or which restrains interstate trade or commerce". He concluded "The present popularity of organized baseball increases, rather than diminishes, the importance of its compliance with standards of reasonableness comparable with those now required by law of interstate trade or commerce."
Chief Justice
Earl Warren
admitted, writing for the majority two years later when denying boxing
the exemption, that "this Court has never before considered the antitrust status of the boxing business. Yet, if it were not for Federal Baseball and Toolson, we think that it would be too clear for dispute." Dissenters Felix Frankfurter
and Sherman Minton
were harshly critical. "It would baffle the subtlest ingenuity to find a single differentiating factor between other sporting exhibitions ...and baseball insofar as the conduct of the sport is relevant to the criteria or considerations by which the Sherman Law becomes applicable to a 'trade or commerce.'", the former wrote. "I cannot translate even the narrowest conception of stare decisis
into the equivalent of writing into the Sherman Law an exemption of baseball to the exclusion of every other sport different not one legal jot or tittle from it." Minton, in his dissent, added:
Another two years passed, and Radovich v. National Football League
came before the Court. The circumstances of professional football
at the time were almost identical to those of baseball, yet the Court ruled that the antitrust exemption was specific to the latter. Tom C. Clark
, writing for a majority of six, defended the Toolson decision as preferable to the alternative: "[M]ore harm would be done in overruling Federal Baseball than in upholding a ruling which, at best, was of dubious validity" and admitted "were we considering the question of baseball for the first time upon a clean slate, we would have no doubts."
Frankfurter again expressed his incredulity. "...[T]he most conscientious probing of the text and the interstices of the Sherman Law fails to disclose that Congress, whose will we are enforcing, excluded baseball — the conditions under which that sport is carried on — from the scope of the Sherman Law, but included football", he said. He was joined in a separate opinion by John Marshall Harlan II
signed by then-new justice William Brennan
: " I am unable to distinguish football from baseball under the rationale of Federal Baseball and Toolson, and can find no basis for attributing to Congress a purpose to put baseball in a class by itself."
Flood v. Kuhn In 1970, St. Louis Cardinals
star center fielder
Curt Flood
decided to refuse a trade to the Philadelphia Phillies
and challenge the reserve clause
again. Due to his stature as a player, his case attracted wide attention. It reached the Court in 1972. Although Flood lost, widespread support for his suit paved the way for free agency
.
William O. Douglas
, who had been on the Toolson majority, had ruled in a 1971 emergency appeal from a suit
brought by Spencer Haywood
that basketball wasn't exempt, either, and suggested he was reconsidering his role in Toolson: "the decision in this suit would be similar to the one on baseball's reserve clause which our decisions exempting baseball from the antitrust laws have foreclosed." The following year he was the only justice from the Toolson court still sitting when Flood v. Kuhn was heard, and made his change of mind explicit in a footnote to his dissent: "While I joined the Court's opinion in Toolson ... I have lived to regret it; and I would now correct what I believe to be its fundamental error."
In that case's majority opinion
, Harry Blackmun
conceded that the facts no longer supported the exemption and that baseball was indeed interstate commerce, but echoed Clark in suggesting that the consequences of overturning the previous decisions would be worse than letting it stand. Chief Justice Warren Burger agreed in a short concurrence that also indicated his acceptance of Douglas's regret.
Much of the criticism of Toolson over the years has viewed it as the middle term of the sequence that begins with Federal Baseball Club and ends with Flood, and considers it in that context. Its embrace of stare decisis
and presumption of congressional inaction as a justification, is notably at odds with the position that Justice Felix Frankfurter
took when writing for the Court in a 1940 trust-law case, Helvering v. Hallock, where prior flawed decisions had not been corrected through legislative action, that "it would require very persuasive circumstances enveloping Congressional silence to debar this Court from re-examining its own doctrines"
One critic, antitrust expert Kevin McDonald of Jones Day
, singles out the 1953 case for having truly created the antitrust exemption by reading congressional intent into Holmes' original opinion. After quoting the per curiams closing sentence, he writes:
Lower courts, he said, took the court's reasoning to mean that other professional team sports were also exempt, forcing the justices to clarify that it only applied to baseball, and criticize their earlier ruling, in order to sustain decisions that football and boxing were interstate commerce and within the scope of antitrust law.
, with free agency one of many goals.
Two years later
, baseball held its first amateur draft
, ending the system whereby wealthier and successful teams like the Yankees were able to keep their farm teams stocked with talent the way they had with Toolson, not only as insurance against player injuries but to prevent opposing teams from signing them. That ended the continuous domination of the Yankees.
Despite legal and judicial criticism and embarrassment, baseball's antitrust exemption remains in effect. Players in the major leagues won free agency with the Seitz decision
in 1975, and the 1998 Curt Flood Act gave it a statutory basis. But for players in the minor leagues, like Toolson, the reserve system persists, and they are still bound to the organization that initially signed them.
New York Yankees
The New York Yankees are a professional baseball team based in the The Bronx, New York. They compete in Major League Baseball in the American League's East Division...
(346 U.S. 356
Case citation
Case citation is the system used in many countries to identify the decisions in past court cases, either in special series of books called reporters or law reports, or in a 'neutral' form which will identify a decision wherever it was reported...
) is a 1953 U.S. Supreme Court
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
decision that upheld, 7–2, the antitrust exemption first granted to Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball is the highest level of professional baseball in the United States and Canada, consisting of teams that play in the National League and the American League...
(MLB) three decades earlier in Federal Baseball Club v. National League
Federal Baseball Club v. National League
Federal Baseball Club v. National League, , is a case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Sherman Antitrust Act did not apply to Major League Baseball.-Background:...
. It was also the first challenge to the reserve clause
Reserve clause
The reserve clause is a term formerly employed in North American professional sports contracts. The reserve clause, contained in all standard player contracts, stated that, upon the contract's expiration the rights to the player were to be retained by the team to which he had been signed...
which prevented free agency
Free agent
In professional sports, a free agent is a player whose contract with a team has expired and who is thus eligible to sign with another club or franchise....
, and one of the first cases heard and decided by the Warren Court
Warren Court
The Warren Court refers to the Supreme Court of the United States between 1953 and 1969, when Earl Warren served as Chief Justice. Warren led a liberal majority that used judicial power in dramatic fashion, to the consternation of conservative opponents...
.
Since it presumed that Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
's failure to act in the years since Federal Baseball Club was an implicit expression of intent to keep baseball exempt from the Sherman Antitrust Act
Sherman Antitrust Act
The Sherman Antitrust Act requires the United States federal government to investigate and pursue trusts, companies, and organizations suspected of violating the Act. It was the first Federal statute to limit cartels and monopolies, and today still forms the basis for most antitrust litigation by...
, it has been read as having done more to create that exemption than the older case. Two justices (Stanley Forman Reed
Stanley Forman Reed
Stanley Forman Reed was a noted American attorney who served as United States Solicitor General from 1935 to 1938 and as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1938 to 1957. He was the last Supreme Court Justice who did not graduate from law school Stanley Forman Reed (December 31,...
and Harold Hitz Burton
Harold Hitz Burton
Harold Hitz Burton was an American politician and lawyer.He served as the 45th mayor of Cleveland, Ohio, as a U.S. Senator from Ohio, and as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was known as a dispassionate jurist who prized equal justice under the law.-Biography:He...
) dissented from the short, unsigned per curiam majority opinion
Majority opinion
In law, a majority opinion is a judicial opinion agreed to by more than half of the members of a court. A majority opinion sets forth the decision of the court and an explanation of the rationale behind the court's decision....
, arguing MLB and its revenue sources had changed enough since 1922 that the logic of that case no longer applied. In 1972, a third justice (William O. Douglas
William O. Douglas
William Orville Douglas was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. With a term lasting 36 years and 209 days, he is the longest-serving justice in the history of the Supreme Court...
) would express his regret at having joined the majority when Toolson was again upheld in the similar Flood v. Kuhn
Flood v. Kuhn
Flood v. Kuhn was a 1972 United States Supreme Court decision upholding, by a 5–3 margin, the antitrust exemption first granted to Major League Baseball in Federal Baseball Club v. National League. It arose from a challenge by St. Louis Cardinals' outfielder Curt Flood when he refused to be...
.
Background of the case
George Earl Toolson had been for many years a pitcherPitcher
In baseball, the pitcher is the player who throwsthe baseball from the pitcher's mound toward the catcher to begin each play, with the goal of retiring a batter, who attempts to either make contact with the pitched ball or draw a walk. In the numbering system used to record defensive plays, the...
for the Newark Bears
Newark Bears
The Newark Bears are an American professional baseball team based in Newark, New Jersey. They are a member of the Canadian American Association of Professional Baseball, which is not affiliated with Major League Baseball. Since the 1999 season, the Bears have played their home games at Bears &...
, a farm team for the New York Yankees
New York Yankees
The New York Yankees are a professional baseball team based in the The Bronx, New York. They compete in Major League Baseball in the American League's East Division...
in the AAA
AAA (baseball)
Triple-A refers to the highest level of play in minor league baseball in the United States and Mexico.-Purpose:Triple-A teams' main purpose is to prepare players for the Major Leagues:...
-class International League
International League
The International League is a minor league baseball league that operates in the eastern United States. Like the Pacific Coast League and the Mexican League, it plays at the Triple-A level, which is one step below Major League Baseball. It was so named because it had teams in both the United States...
. He believed he was good enough to play in the major leagues, if not for the Yankees then for another team. But due to the reserve clause
Reserve clause
The reserve clause is a term formerly employed in North American professional sports contracts. The reserve clause, contained in all standard player contracts, stated that, upon the contract's expiration the rights to the player were to be retained by the team to which he had been signed...
in his and every other player's contract, under which teams reserved rights to a player for a year after the contract expired, he was effectively bound to the talent-rich Yankees and could not negotiate a new contract with another team.
When the Newark franchise was dissolved prior to the 1950 season, he was demoted by the Yankees' organization to the Binghamton Triplets
Binghamton Triplets
The Binghamton Triplets were a minor league baseball team in Binghamton, New York, affiliated with the New York Yankees ; the team also had brief affiliations with the Kansas City Athletics and the Milwaukee Braves...
, an A-class team within its minor league
Minor league baseball
Minor league baseball is a hierarchy of professional baseball leagues in the Americas that compete at levels below Major League Baseball and provide opportunities for player development. All of the minor leagues are operated as independent businesses...
system. He refused to report and instead filed suit, arguing the reserve clause was a restraint of trade
Restraint of trade
Restraint of trade is a common law doctrine relating to the enforceability of contractual restrictions on freedom to conduct business. In an old leading case of Mitchell v Reynolds Lord Smith LC said,...
and that baseball should not be exempt from antitrust laws.
Baseball antitrust exemption
In 1922 Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. was an American jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1902 to 1932...
had held for a unanimous court in Federal Baseball Club that professional baseball did not meet the definition of interstate commerce under the Constitution
United States Constitution
The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It is the framework for the organization of the United States government and for the relationship of the federal government with the states, citizens, and all people within the United States.The first three...
and the Sherman Act because, although teams traveled between states from game to game, that travel was "incidental" to the business and not an essential aspect, since all the revenue was generated from the actual games.
By the time Toolson filed his suit, baseball had grown greatly in popularity and as such had changed. Improved roads and public transportation meant that fans in some areas crossed state lines to attend games, and radio and television broadcasts, which the teams made money from, brought those games to the fans who did not leave home. The interstate aspects of the professional game had greatly increased.
A few years earlier, commissioner of baseball
Commissioner of Baseball
The Commissioner of Baseball is the chief executive of Major League Baseball and its associated minor leagues. Under the direction of the Commissioner, the Office of the Commissioner of Baseball hires and maintains the sport's umpiring crews, and negotiates marketing, labor, and television contracts...
Happy Chandler
Happy Chandler
Albert Benjamin "Happy" Chandler, Sr. was a politician from the US state of Kentucky. He represented the state in the U.S. Senate and served as its 44th and 49th governor. Aside from his political positions, he also served as the second Commissioner of Major League Baseball from 1945 to 1951 and...
had been sued by former New York Giants
San Francisco Giants
The San Francisco Giants are a Major League Baseball team based in San Francisco, California, playing in the National League West Division....
outfielder
Outfielder
Outfielder is a generic term applied to each of the people playing in the three defensive positions in baseball farthest from the batter. These defenders are the left fielder, the center fielder, and the right fielder...
Danny Gardella
Danny Gardella
Daniel Lewis Gardella was an American left fielder in Major League Baseball who played with the New York Giants and St. Louis Cardinals...
, who argued that the five-year ban Chandler imposed on players who, like Gardella, had jumped briefly to the rival Mexican League was an unfair use of monopoly power and that Federal Baseball Club no longer applied. After an initial ruling in favor of baseball was overturned by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals
United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is one of the thirteen United States Courts of Appeals...
, who ruled that the case could go to trial, Chandler settled with Gardella for a reported $65,000 in 1949 (Gardella had sought $300,000) since his lawyers had advised him he would not win at the Supreme Court.
In 1951, Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
congressman
United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...
Emanuel Celler
Emanuel Celler
Emanuel Celler was an American politician from New York who served in the United States House of Representatives for almost 50 years, from March 1923 to January 1973. He was a member of the Democratic Party.-Early life:...
, an advocate for strong antitrust enforcement, had chaired a special Judiciary Committee
United States House Committee on the Judiciary
The U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary, also called the House Judiciary Committee, is a standing committee of the United States House of Representatives. It is charged with overseeing the administration of justice within the federal courts, administrative agencies and Federal law enforcement...
subcommittee on monopoly power, which had looked into baseball, among other things. It had been strongly critical, but took no action because of the pending court cases from other Mexican League players.
Trial and appeal
Both the district court in Los AngelesUnited States District Court for the Central District of California
The United States District Court for the Central District of California serves over 18 million people in southern and central California, making it the largest federal judicial district by population...
and the Ninth Circuit
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is a U.S. federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts:* District of Alaska* District of Arizona...
relied on Federal Baseball Club in ruling for the defendants. The Supreme Court granted certiorari
Certiorari
Certiorari is a type of writ seeking judicial review, recognized in U.S., Roman, English, Philippine, and other law. Certiorari is the present passive infinitive of the Latin certiorare...
to hear it and consider a number of other cases by former Mexican League players pending at the appellate level.
Among the lawyers working on the case for baseball was Bowie Kuhn
Bowie Kuhn
Bowie Kent Kuhn was an American lawyer and sports administrator who served as the fifth Commissioner of Major League Baseball from February 4, , to September 30,...
, then of the prestigious firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher
Willkie Farr & Gallagher
Founded in 1888, Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP is an international law firm with eight offices in six countries . The firm has cultivated a strong corporate practice focused on investment funds, bankruptcy and intellectual property...
, who would later himself become baseball commissioner and the respondent
Defendant
A defendant or defender is any party who is required to answer the complaint of a plaintiff or pursuer in a civil lawsuit before a court, or any party who has been formally charged or accused of violating a criminal statute...
in Flood v. Kuhn
Flood v. Kuhn
Flood v. Kuhn was a 1972 United States Supreme Court decision upholding, by a 5–3 margin, the antitrust exemption first granted to Major League Baseball in Federal Baseball Club v. National League. It arose from a challenge by St. Louis Cardinals' outfielder Curt Flood when he refused to be...
, the next case to challenge the reserve clause. When the case reached the Supreme Court, the Boston Red Sox
Boston Red Sox
The Boston Red Sox are a professional baseball team based in Boston, Massachusetts, and a member of Major League Baseball’s American League Eastern Division. Founded in as one of the American League's eight charter franchises, the Red Sox's home ballpark has been Fenway Park since . The "Red Sox"...
filed an amicus curiae
Amicus curiae
An amicus curiae is someone, not a party to a case, who volunteers to offer information to assist a court in deciding a matter before it...
brief in support of the Yankees, their bitter rival
Yankees-Red Sox rivalry
The Yankees–Red Sox rivalry is one of the oldest, most famous and fiercest rivalries in professional sports. For more than 100 years, Major League Baseball's Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees of the American League have been intense rivals....
. Since the Second Circuit
United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is one of the thirteen United States Courts of Appeals...
, in reinstating Gardella's challenge, had called Federal Baseball "an impotent zombie" in light of recent Supreme Court antitrust decisions, baseball did not expect the Court to rule in its favor.
Decision
A one-paragraph unsigned per curiam opinion was followed by a longer dissent by Justice Harold Hitz BurtonHarold Hitz Burton
Harold Hitz Burton was an American politician and lawyer.He served as the 45th mayor of Cleveland, Ohio, as a U.S. Senator from Ohio, and as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was known as a dispassionate jurist who prized equal justice under the law.-Biography:He...
, joined by Stanley Forman Reed
Stanley Forman Reed
Stanley Forman Reed was a noted American attorney who served as United States Solicitor General from 1935 to 1938 and as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1938 to 1957. He was the last Supreme Court Justice who did not graduate from law school Stanley Forman Reed (December 31,...
.
Majority
After briefly restating the conclusion of Federal Baseball Club, the majority continued:Dissent
Burton listed a number of aspects of contemporary baseball — the extensive farm system, broadcasting revenues, national advertising campaigns and even its reach beyond the borders of the United States — to justify his statement that "it is a contradiction in terms to say that the defendants in the cases before us are not now engaged in interstate trade or commerce as those terms are used in the Constitution of the United States and in the Sherman Act". He also cited a report by a HouseUnited States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...
subcommittee that had come to a similar conclusion.
He conceded "the major asset which baseball is to our Nation, the high place it enjoys in the hearts of our people, and the possible justification of special treatment for organized sports which are engaged in interstate trade or commerce". But while it was certainly within Congress's power to repeal or specifically enact an antitrust exemption for baseball, it had not done so, "and no court has demonstrated the existence of an implied exemption from that Act of any sport that is so highly organized as to amount to an interstate monopoly or which restrains interstate trade or commerce". He concluded "The present popularity of organized baseball increases, rather than diminishes, the importance of its compliance with standards of reasonableness comparable with those now required by law of interstate trade or commerce."
Subsequent jurisprudence
Within the next few terms, Toolsons logic was criticized directly and indirectly by other justices, including some who had been in the majority, in dissents from opinions in which the Court held that it was specific to baseball and that even other professional sports weren't covered.Chief Justice
Chief Justice of the United States
The Chief Justice of the United States is the head of the United States federal court system and the chief judge of the Supreme Court of the United States. The Chief Justice is one of nine Supreme Court justices; the other eight are the Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States...
Earl Warren
Earl Warren
Earl Warren was the 14th Chief Justice of the United States.He is known for the sweeping decisions of the Warren Court, which ended school segregation and transformed many areas of American law, especially regarding the rights of the accused, ending public-school-sponsored prayer, and requiring...
admitted, writing for the majority two years later when denying boxing
Boxing
Boxing, also called pugilism, is a combat sport in which two people fight each other using their fists. Boxing is supervised by a referee over a series of between one to three minute intervals called rounds...
the exemption, that "this Court has never before considered the antitrust status of the boxing business. Yet, if it were not for Federal Baseball and Toolson, we think that it would be too clear for dispute." Dissenters Felix Frankfurter
Felix Frankfurter
Felix Frankfurter was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.-Early life:Frankfurter was born into a Jewish family on November 15, 1882, in Vienna, Austria, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in Europe. He was the third of six children of Leopold and Emma Frankfurter...
and Sherman Minton
Sherman Minton
Sherman "Shay" Minton was a Democratic United States Senator from Indiana and an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was the most educated justice during his time on the Supreme Court, having attended Indiana University, Yale and the Sorbonne...
were harshly critical. "It would baffle the subtlest ingenuity to find a single differentiating factor between other sporting exhibitions ...and baseball insofar as the conduct of the sport is relevant to the criteria or considerations by which the Sherman Law becomes applicable to a 'trade or commerce.'", the former wrote. "I cannot translate even the narrowest conception of stare decisis
Stare decisis
Stare decisis is a legal principle by which judges are obliged to respect the precedents established by prior decisions...
into the equivalent of writing into the Sherman Law an exemption of baseball to the exclusion of every other sport different not one legal jot or tittle from it." Minton, in his dissent, added:
Another two years passed, and Radovich v. National Football League
Radovich v. National Football League
Radovich v. National Football League , , is a 1957 U.S. Supreme Court decision ruling that professional football, unlike professional baseball, was subject to antitrust laws...
came before the Court. The circumstances of professional football
American football
American football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...
at the time were almost identical to those of baseball, yet the Court ruled that the antitrust exemption was specific to the latter. Tom C. Clark
Tom C. Clark
Thomas Campbell Clark was United States Attorney General from 1945 to 1949 and an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States .- Early life and career :...
, writing for a majority of six, defended the Toolson decision as preferable to the alternative: "[M]ore harm would be done in overruling Federal Baseball than in upholding a ruling which, at best, was of dubious validity" and admitted "were we considering the question of baseball for the first time upon a clean slate, we would have no doubts."
Frankfurter again expressed his incredulity. "...[T]he most conscientious probing of the text and the interstices of the Sherman Law fails to disclose that Congress, whose will we are enforcing, excluded baseball — the conditions under which that sport is carried on — from the scope of the Sherman Law, but included football", he said. He was joined in a separate opinion by John Marshall Harlan II
John Marshall Harlan II
John Marshall Harlan was an American jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court from 1955 to 1971. His namesake was his grandfather John Marshall Harlan, another associate justice who served from 1877 to 1911.Harlan was a student at Upper Canada College and Appleby College and...
signed by then-new justice William Brennan
William J. Brennan, Jr.
William Joseph Brennan, Jr. was an American jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1956 to 1990...
: " I am unable to distinguish football from baseball under the rationale of Federal Baseball and Toolson, and can find no basis for attributing to Congress a purpose to put baseball in a class by itself."
Flood v. Kuhn In 1970, St. Louis Cardinals
St. Louis Cardinals
The St. Louis Cardinals are a professional baseball team based in St. Louis, Missouri. They are members of the Central Division in the National League of Major League Baseball. The Cardinals have won eleven World Series championships, the most of any National League team, and second overall only to...
star center fielder
Center fielder
A center fielder, abbreviated CF, is the outfielder in baseball who plays defense in center field – the baseball fielding position between left field and right field...
Curt Flood
Curt Flood
Curtis Charles Flood was a Major League Baseball player who spent most of his career as a center fielder for the St. Louis Cardinals. A defensive standout, he led the National League in putouts four times and in fielding percentage twice, winning Gold Glove Awards in his last seven full seasons...
decided to refuse a trade to the Philadelphia Phillies
Philadelphia Phillies
The Philadelphia Phillies are a Major League Baseball team. They are the oldest continuous, one-name, one-city franchise in all of professional American sports, dating to 1883. The Phillies are a member of the Eastern Division of Major League Baseball's National League...
and challenge the reserve clause
Reserve clause
The reserve clause is a term formerly employed in North American professional sports contracts. The reserve clause, contained in all standard player contracts, stated that, upon the contract's expiration the rights to the player were to be retained by the team to which he had been signed...
again. Due to his stature as a player, his case attracted wide attention. It reached the Court in 1972. Although Flood lost, widespread support for his suit paved the way for free agency
Free agent
In professional sports, a free agent is a player whose contract with a team has expired and who is thus eligible to sign with another club or franchise....
.
William O. Douglas
William O. Douglas
William Orville Douglas was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. With a term lasting 36 years and 209 days, he is the longest-serving justice in the history of the Supreme Court...
, who had been on the Toolson majority, had ruled in a 1971 emergency appeal from a suit
Haywood v. National Basketball Association
Haywood v. National Basketball Association, 401 U.S. 1204 , was a U.S. Supreme Court decision that ruled, 7–2, against the National Basketball Association’s old requirement that a player may not be drafted by a NBA team unless he waited four years following his graduation from high...
brought by Spencer Haywood
Spencer Haywood
Spencer Haywood is a retired American professional basketball player.- High school :In 1964, Haywood moved to Detroit, Michigan, where he attended Pershing High School...
that basketball wasn't exempt, either, and suggested he was reconsidering his role in Toolson: "the decision in this suit would be similar to the one on baseball's reserve clause which our decisions exempting baseball from the antitrust laws have foreclosed." The following year he was the only justice from the Toolson court still sitting when Flood v. Kuhn was heard, and made his change of mind explicit in a footnote to his dissent: "While I joined the Court's opinion in Toolson ... I have lived to regret it; and I would now correct what I believe to be its fundamental error."
In that case's majority opinion
Majority opinion
In law, a majority opinion is a judicial opinion agreed to by more than half of the members of a court. A majority opinion sets forth the decision of the court and an explanation of the rationale behind the court's decision....
, Harry Blackmun
Harry Blackmun
Harold Andrew Blackmun was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1970 until 1994. He is best known as the author of Roe v. Wade.- Early years and professional career :...
conceded that the facts no longer supported the exemption and that baseball was indeed interstate commerce, but echoed Clark in suggesting that the consequences of overturning the previous decisions would be worse than letting it stand. Chief Justice Warren Burger agreed in a short concurrence that also indicated his acceptance of Douglas's regret.
Legal analysis and criticism
Sports business historian Andrew Zimbalist attributes the unexpected outcome to "a game of cat and mouse" between Congress and the Court:Much of the criticism of Toolson over the years has viewed it as the middle term of the sequence that begins with Federal Baseball Club and ends with Flood, and considers it in that context. Its embrace of stare decisis
Stare decisis
Stare decisis is a legal principle by which judges are obliged to respect the precedents established by prior decisions...
and presumption of congressional inaction as a justification, is notably at odds with the position that Justice Felix Frankfurter
Felix Frankfurter
Felix Frankfurter was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.-Early life:Frankfurter was born into a Jewish family on November 15, 1882, in Vienna, Austria, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in Europe. He was the third of six children of Leopold and Emma Frankfurter...
took when writing for the Court in a 1940 trust-law case, Helvering v. Hallock, where prior flawed decisions had not been corrected through legislative action, that "it would require very persuasive circumstances enveloping Congressional silence to debar this Court from re-examining its own doctrines"
One critic, antitrust expert Kevin McDonald of Jones Day
Jones Day
Jones Day is an international law firm founded in Cleveland, Ohio on March 1, 1893, by Judge Edwin J. Blandin and William Lowe Rice. Jones Day is the eighth largest law firm in the world by revenue, and the fourth highest grossing firm in the US with annual revenues of US$1.4 billion...
, singles out the 1953 case for having truly created the antitrust exemption by reading congressional intent into Holmes' original opinion. After quoting the per curiams closing sentence, he writes:
Lower courts, he said, took the court's reasoning to mean that other professional team sports were also exempt, forcing the justices to clarify that it only applied to baseball, and criticize their earlier ruling, in order to sustain decisions that football and boxing were interstate commerce and within the scope of antitrust law.
Effect on baseball
Toolson's career was over, and MLB resumed its status quo ante. But the underlying issues remained, and a decade later began to be addressed when players unionized as the Major League Baseball Players AssociationMajor League Baseball Players Association
The Major League Baseball Players Association is the union of professional major-league baseball players.-History of MLBPA:The MLBPA was not the first attempt to unionize baseball players...
, with free agency one of many goals.
Two years later
1965 in baseball
-Major League Baseball:*World Series: Los Angeles Dodgers over Minnesota Twins ; Sandy Koufax, MVP*All-Star Game, July 13 at Metropolitan Stadium: National League, 6-5; Juan Marichal, MVP-Other champions:*College World Series: Arizona State...
, baseball held its first amateur draft
Draft (sports)
A draft is a process used in the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, Russia and the Philippines to allocate certain players to sports teams. In a draft, teams take turns selecting from a pool of eligible players...
, ending the system whereby wealthier and successful teams like the Yankees were able to keep their farm teams stocked with talent the way they had with Toolson, not only as insurance against player injuries but to prevent opposing teams from signing them. That ended the continuous domination of the Yankees.
Despite legal and judicial criticism and embarrassment, baseball's antitrust exemption remains in effect. Players in the major leagues won free agency with the Seitz decision
Seitz decision
The Seitz decision was a ruling by arbitrator Peter Seitz on December 23, 1975 which declared that Major League Baseball players became free agents upon playing one year for their team without a contract, effectively nullifying baseball's reserve clause...
in 1975, and the 1998 Curt Flood Act gave it a statutory basis. But for players in the minor leagues, like Toolson, the reserve system persists, and they are still bound to the organization that initially signed them.