Radovich v. National Football League
Encyclopedia
Radovich v. National Football League
(NFL), , is a 1957 U.S. Supreme Court
decision ruling that professional football
, unlike professional baseball
, was subject to antitrust
laws. It was the third of three such cases heard by the Court in the 1950s involving the antitrust status of professional sports.
Three justices dissented, finding the majority arbitrary and inconsistent in refusing football the exemption it had upheld five years previously in Toolson v. New York Yankees
. The majority admitted that the similarity between the two sports from a legal standpoint would probably have denied baseball the exemption as well were it sought afresh, but existing case law
had tied their hands in the absence of any congressional action.
While the NFL has secured some limited antitrust exemptions since through the legislative process, the lack of a blanket exemption due to this decision has had a major impact on the subsequent history of football
. Unlike Major League Baseball
, the NFL has faced several competing leagues since then (one of which merged with it
) and seen five of its franchises move to new cities. Many of these actions have been accompanied by lawsuits brought against the NFL (often successfully) by competing leagues, public stadium-management authorities and its own owners.
undrafted
University of Southern California
graduate William "Bill" Radovich
began his NFL career as a guard
with the Detroit Lions
. He chose to sign with them because they were the only team in the league that guaranteed players an off-season job.
After four seasons, during which he made sportswriters' All-Pro
lists, he left to serve in the Navy
during World War II
. He returned to the Lions after the war ended, in 1945
.
The next year he asked to be traded to the Los Angeles Rams, or be better paid, as his father, who lived near that city, was seriously ill and he wanted to be able to spend more time with him. Lions' owner Fred Madel Jr. refused, saying (according to Radovich) "I'd either play in Detroit or I wouldn't play anywhere". Since his contract had expired, he instead signed with the Los Angeles Dons
of the rival All-America Football Conference
(AAFC) and played with them for two seasons, despite Madel's promise to put him on a blacklist
for five seasons. In 1948 the San Francisco Clippers of the Pacific Coast League (PCL), a minor pro football league whose clubs had some affiliations with the NFL, offered him a position as a player and coach. After learning that the NFL had indeed blacklisted Radovich due to his play in the AAFC and would punish any club that did hire him, however, the Clippers withdrew their offer.
Radovich had to take jobs outside of professional football. One was waiting tables at Los Angeles's Brown Derby
restaurant. There he met Joseph Alioto
, a former antitrust litigator with the Justice Department
. In conversation, he told Alioto how he had come to this, and Alioto responded by sketching out a legal brief
on the back of a cocktail napkin.
Ultimately it collapsed due to the dominance of the Cleveland Browns
, who won all three of its championships, and financial problems and instability at some of its weaker franchises. In December 1949 the two leagues merged. The Browns, Baltimore Colts and San Francisco 49ers
joined the NFL; other teams folded or merged with an existing team.
, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. had written for a unanimous court that Major League Baseball
was not covered by the Sherman Antitrust Act
because it was not interstate commerce. Travel by teams across state line was "an incident" to the business of staging baseball games, which he described as "purely state affairs". Three decades later Toolson v. New York Yankees
upheld that precedent
due to congressional inaction to change it, despite changes in the business such as broadcasting deals that made the interstate aspect a much greater part of the commerce.
Toolsons short, per curiam majority opinion
concluded that the antitrust exemption applied to baseball only. In United States v. International Boxing Club of New York
, the Court denied a motion by the appellee to extend it to professional boxing
despite the commercial similarities between it and baseball.
, against the NFL, all its member franchises
, commissioner Bert Bell
the PCL (by then defunct) and its commissioner at the time, J. Rufus Klawans. He alleged he had been the victim of a group boycott
intended to ruin the AAFC and sought $35,000 in damages. The defendants, primarily the NFL, argued in a pretrial motion that the antitrust exemption for baseball should apply equally to football, barring the lawsuit, and that even if it didn't, it should be dismissed for failure to state a cause of action
.
The district court
accepted those arguments, as did the Ninth Circuit
. The latter distinguished football from boxing, which the Supreme Court had already denied the exemption, by noting that it and baseball were both team sports, unlike boxing.
brief on their behalf, drafted by Solicitor General J. Lee Rankin
.Maxwell Keith wrote the Petition for Certiorari and the briefs before the Court on behalf of Mr. Radovich. He made the oral argument along with the Solicter General. Marshall Leahy and Bernard Nordlinger argued for the NFL.
wrote for the majority; there were no concurring opinions by the other justices. On the other side, Felix Frankfurter
wrote an opinion reiterating his dissent in International Boxing Club, and John Marshall Harlan II
was joined by new justice William Brennan
in another.
He also found that Radovich had adequately stated a cause of action
, dismissing claims of frivolity and vagueness raised by the NFL. Broadcasting revenues were likely, if proven, to be enough of the defendants' business alone to come under the terms of the Sherman Antitrust Act
. "This Court should not add requirements to burden the private litigant beyond what is specifically set forth by Congress", he concluded. "We think that Radovich is entitled to an opportunity to prove his charges."
of stare decisis
, a concern he had voiced in International Boxing. "Full respect for stare decisis does not require a judge to forego his own convictions promptly after his brethren have rejected them", he concluded.
Harlan, who had been part of the majority in Toolson and International Boxing, also saw the majority as purely arbitrary in his short dissent. "I am unable to distinguish football from baseball under the rationale of Federal Baseball and Toolson," he wrote, "and can find no basis for attributing to Congress a purpose to put baseball in a class by itself". He accused the majority of using "discriminatory fiat" to make "untenable distinctions" between the two sports.
"What I did opened doors", he said. "It's the first time that any professional sport was ever taken to court and beaten." He never worked in football again and died in 2002.
Alioto was later elected mayor of San Francisco for two terms. He and the NFL would meet again in antitrust court, most notably as adversaries when he successfully represented Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum
Commission in its suit that cleared the way for the Oakland Raiders
' move to that city
. But he also successfully defended it against a suit brought by disgruntled Boston Patriots' quarterback
Joe Kapp
, and represented Philadelphia Eagles
' owner Leonard Tose
in an unsuccessful action against the bankers he alleged had conspired to try to force him to sell the team in the late 1970s.
Congress to pass an antitrust exemption after the decision, and had almost succeeded before he died. His successor, Pete Rozelle
, continued the effort, but was only able to get limited exemptions to allow sharing of television revenues and, later, the merger
with the American Football League
(AFL). Since the Court's ruling means professional football is covered under antitrust law, the NFL has faced a number of competing leagues and lawsuits it would not otherwise be subject to.
two years after Radovich was decided, and played for six seasons. The NFL could not use the same tactics it had against the AAFC, and the two leagues merged in 1966 to become the modern NFL. When the Dallas Cowboys
were created to compete for the same market as Hunt's Dallas Texans
, the AFL brought a suit that eventually led to the merger.
Today the AFL is considered the NFL's most successful competitor. To secure the antitrust exemption that made the merger possible, Rozelle promised Louisiana
congressman Hale Boggs
the NFL would expand into New Orleans, and the Saints
and Cincinnati Bengals
were added to the league shortly thereafter.
In the 1970s the World Football League
(WFL) took on the NFL. An apparently auspicious start, during a short players' strike, turned sour when it was discovered teams gave away many tickets, and soon the teams and their league were experiencing serious financial problems. After a season and a half it folded. The only two teams to have remained solvent applied to join the NFL as expansion team
s but were rejected.
The next decade brought the United States Football League
(USFL), which played its season in the spring instead of fall. After three seasons of play during which it never had the same amount of teams and many franchises moved, it won an antitrust suit it had brought against the NFL, but the jury awarded it only the token amount of one dollar in damages. The owners then decided to fold the league as they could not afford to continue.
Since then only one other league has attempted to compete with the NFL. In 2001, NBC
, shut out of its TV contract with pro football for the first time since the 1960s, formed the XFL
as a joint venture
with the World Wrestling Federation
. The league played one short season, during the months after the NFL season ended, and then folded.
tight end
John Mackey
sued to block enforcement of the "Rozelle Rule", by which teams that signed another team's free agent
s were compensated with players or draft picks determined by the commissioner. His legal victory gave the players free agency, which their baseball counterparts had been denied by the Supreme Court
, but the NFLPA bargained
it away in return for compensation to current and former players affected by the Rozelle Rule.
After the 1987 strike, the players won it back, but only after New York Jets
running back
Freeman McNeil
filed a successful lawsuit that challenged the free agency provisions under the Sherman Act. Eventually the players got the current free agency system in return for a salary cap
.
The 1987 strike led to another antitrust action before the Supreme Court, Brown v. Pro Football, Inc. . Anthony Brown, a practice squad player for the Washington Redskins
during the strike, challenged the teams' decision to unilaterally impose a $1,000 weekly maximum for practice players. This time, the NFL won, as the justices ruled 8-1 that groups of employers, as well as single employers, could implement a contract provision they had offered in good faith during an impasse
.
(NASL), which challenged an NFL policy, never formally adopted, barring owners from having interests in other professional team sports. Rozelle had pushed for its inclusion as an amendment to the league constitution, believing that owners must be focused on football and could be in a conflict of interest
with the NFL if they owned franchises in other sports, since the other sports competed for disposable income with the NFL. Opposing them were Hunt, Miami Dolphins
' owner Joe Robbie and Edward Bennett Williams
, who at the time owned the Baltimore Orioles
as well as the Redskins. Hunt had founded the Dallas Tornado
, and owned part of the NBA
Chicago Bulls
for a while. Robbie's wife owned the Fort Lauderdale Strikers, and Robbie himself warned that the policy was "an open invitation for a lawsuit under the Sherman Act".
The NASL brought suit against the NFL, arguing that its restrictions on cross-ownership were an unfair trade practice to deny other sports and leagues full access to the pool of experienced franchise owners. After losing in district court, it won on appeal but by then was in desperate straits, and folded two years later. The NFL's ownership policies were slightly modified; Rozelle never got the full limitations he wanted.
During that time, the most significant suit in modern NFL history was brought. The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission
(LAMCC) sued the league over its provision requiring unanimous approval from other owners for franchise moves, which had otherwise hindered its efforts to conclude a lease with the Raiders
, then playing in Oakland
, where owner Al Davis
was unhappy with the condition of Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum. Davis had also been incensed that the league had allowed the LA Coliseum's previous NFL team, the Los Angeles Rams, to move to Anaheim Stadium despite his abstention from the vote. His team began play in the LA Coliseum in 1981.
The LAMCC's suit was the NFL's most notable use of the "single entity" defense: that despite being composed of more than two dozen separate member teams it was one business for purposes of the Sherman Act. It failed both at trial and then in appeals court, and ultimately the Supreme Court denied certiorari
in 1984. Shortly afterwards the Colts moved to Indianapolis
, the first of several franchise moves made possible by the invalidation of the NFL's ability to prevent them.
before the House Judiciary Committees
in support of another exemption bill
, Rozelle complained that "[L]eagues are regularly damned in antitrust if they do and damned in antitrust if they don't." He noted that at the time, the city of Oakland was planning to sue the NFL if it allowed the Raiders to move to Los Angeles, and the LAMCC was suing it for not allowing the move.
Rozelle's complaint received some support in the 1990s when sports-law expert Gary Roberts testified to Congress that sports-related antitrust decisions, including many of those above, had been "inconsistent, often unjustifiable, and generally counterproductive". In Brown, Justice Stephen Breyer
's majority opinion
acknowledged that "clubs that make up a professional sports league are not completely independent economic competitors, as they depend upon a degree of cooperation for economic survival."
National Football League
The National Football League is the highest level of professional American football in the United States, and is considered the top professional American football league in the world. It was formed by eleven teams in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association, with the league changing...
(NFL), , is a 1957 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 ruling that 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...
, unlike professional baseball
Baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...
, was subject to antitrust
Antitrust
The United States antitrust law is a body of laws that prohibits anti-competitive behavior and unfair business practices. Antitrust laws are intended to encourage competition in the marketplace. These competition laws make illegal certain practices deemed to hurt businesses or consumers or both,...
laws. It was the third of three such cases heard by the Court in the 1950s involving the antitrust status of professional sports.
Three justices dissented, finding the majority arbitrary and inconsistent in refusing football the exemption it had upheld five years previously in Toolson v. New York Yankees
Toolson v. New York Yankees
Toolson v. New York Yankees is a 1953 U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld, 7–2, the antitrust exemption first granted to Major League Baseball three decades earlier in Federal Baseball Club v. National League...
. The majority admitted that the similarity between the two sports from a legal standpoint would probably have denied baseball the exemption as well were it sought afresh, but existing case law
Case law
In law, case law is the set of reported judicial decisions of selected appellate courts and other courts of first instance which make new interpretations of the law and, therefore, can be cited as precedents in a process known as stare decisis...
had tied their hands in the absence of any congressional action.
While the NFL has secured some limited antitrust exemptions since through the legislative process, the lack of a blanket exemption due to this decision has had a major impact on the subsequent history of football
History of American football
American football can be traced to early versions of rugby football and association football. Both games have their origin in varieties of football played in Britain in the mid-19th century, in which a football is kicked at a goal and/or run over a line....
. Unlike 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...
, the NFL has faced several competing leagues since then (one of which merged with it
AFL-NFL Merger
The AFL–NFL merger of 1970 was the merger of the two major professional American football leagues in the United States at the time: the National Football League and the American Football League...
) and seen five of its franchises move to new cities. Many of these actions have been accompanied by lawsuits brought against the NFL (often successfully) by competing leagues, public stadium-management authorities and its own owners.
Background of the case
In 19381938 NFL season
The 1938 NFL season was the 19th regular season of the National Football League. The season ended when the New York Giants defeated the Green Bay Packers in the NFL Championship Game.-Major rule changes:...
undrafted
NFL Draft
The National Football League Draft is an annual event in which the National Football League teams select eligible college football players and it is their most common source of player recruitment. The basic design of the draft is each team is given a position in the drafting order in reverse order...
University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
graduate William "Bill" Radovich
Bill Radovich
William Alex Radovich is a former American football guard.-Pro career:...
began his NFL career as a guard
Guard (American football)
In American and Canadian football, a guard is a player that lines up between the center and the tackles on the offensive line of a football team....
with the Detroit Lions
Detroit Lions
The Detroit Lions are a professional American football team based in Detroit, Michigan. They are members of the North Division of the National Football Conference in the National Football League , and play their home games at Ford Field in Downtown Detroit.Originally based in Portsmouth, Ohio and...
. He chose to sign with them because they were the only team in the league that guaranteed players an off-season job.
After four seasons, during which he made sportswriters' All-Pro
All-Pro
All-Pro is a term mostly used in the NFL for the best players of each position during that season. It began as polls of sportswriters in the early 1920s...
lists, he left to serve in the Navy
United States Navy
The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...
during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. He returned to the Lions after the war ended, in 1945
1945 NFL season
The 1945 NFL season was the 26th regular season of the National Football League. The Pittsburgh Steelers and the Chicago Cardinals resumed their traditional operations....
.
The next year he asked to be traded to the Los Angeles Rams, or be better paid, as his father, who lived near that city, was seriously ill and he wanted to be able to spend more time with him. Lions' owner Fred Madel Jr. refused, saying (according to Radovich) "I'd either play in Detroit or I wouldn't play anywhere". Since his contract had expired, he instead signed with the Los Angeles Dons
Los Angeles Dons
The Los Angeles Dons were an American football team in the now defunct All-America Football Conference from 1946 to 1949 that played in the Los Angeles Coliseum....
of the rival All-America Football Conference
All-America Football Conference
The All-America Football Conference was a professional American football league that challenged the established National Football League from 1946 to 1949. One of the NFL's most formidable challengers, the AAFC attracted many of the nation's best players, and introduced many lasting innovations...
(AAFC) and played with them for two seasons, despite Madel's promise to put him on a blacklist
Blacklist
A blacklist is a list or register of entities who, for one reason or another, are being denied a particular privilege, service, mobility, access or recognition. As a verb, to blacklist can mean to deny someone work in a particular field, or to ostracize a person from a certain social circle...
for five seasons. In 1948 the San Francisco Clippers of the Pacific Coast League (PCL), a minor pro football league whose clubs had some affiliations with the NFL, offered him a position as a player and coach. After learning that the NFL had indeed blacklisted Radovich due to his play in the AAFC and would punish any club that did hire him, however, the Clippers withdrew their offer.
Radovich had to take jobs outside of professional football. One was waiting tables at Los Angeles's Brown Derby
Brown Derby
The Brown Derby was the name of a chain of restaurants in Los Angeles, California. The first and most famous of these was shaped like a men's derby hat, an iconic image that became synonymous with the Golden Age of Hollywood....
restaurant. There he met Joseph Alioto
Joseph Alioto
Joseph Lawrence Alioto was the 36th mayor of San Francisco, California, from 1968 to 1976.-Biography:...
, a former antitrust litigator with the Justice Department
United States Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated...
. In conversation, he told Alioto how he had come to this, and Alioto responded by sketching out a legal brief
Brief (law)
A brief is a written legal document used in various legal adversarial systems that is presented to a court arguing why the party to the case should prevail....
on the back of a cocktail napkin.
NFL-AAFC rivalry
The AAFC was an eight-team league that played from 1946-49. Since it emerged at a time when the NFL was just beginning to recover from the war years (when some teams temporarily merged), was national in scope and had owners wealthier than most of their NFL counterparts, it posed a serious competitive threat to the older league. The NFL took many steps to prevent the AAFC from making headway, blacklisting media who had covered the league as well as players who jumped to it.Ultimately it collapsed due to the dominance of the Cleveland Browns
Cleveland Browns
The Cleveland Browns are a professional football team based in Cleveland, Ohio. They are currently members of the North Division of the American Football Conference in the National Football League...
, who won all three of its championships, and financial problems and instability at some of its weaker franchises. In December 1949 the two leagues merged. The Browns, Baltimore Colts and San Francisco 49ers
San Francisco 49ers
The San Francisco 49ers are a professional American football team based in San Francisco, California, playing in the West Division of the National Football Conference in the National Football League . The team was founded in 1946 as a charter member of the All-America Football Conference and...
joined the NFL; other teams folded or merged with an existing team.
Professional sports and antitrust
In Federal Baseball Club v. National LeagueFederal 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:...
, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. had written for a unanimous court that 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...
was not covered by 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...
because it was not interstate commerce. Travel by teams across state line was "an incident" to the business of staging baseball games, which he described as "purely state affairs". Three decades later Toolson v. New York Yankees
Toolson v. New York Yankees
Toolson v. New York Yankees is a 1953 U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld, 7–2, the antitrust exemption first granted to Major League Baseball three decades earlier in Federal Baseball Club v. National League...
upheld that precedent
Precedent
In common law legal systems, a precedent or authority is a principle or rule established in a legal case that a court or other judicial body may apply when deciding subsequent cases with similar issues or facts...
due to congressional inaction to change it, despite changes in the business such as broadcasting deals that made the interstate aspect a much greater part of the commerce.
Toolsons short, 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....
concluded that the antitrust exemption applied to baseball only. In United States v. International Boxing Club of New York
United States v. International Boxing Club of New York
United States v. International Boxing Club of New York , often referred to as International Boxing Club or just International Boxing, was an antitrust decision of the U.S. Supreme Court...
, the Court denied a motion by the appellee to extend it to professional boxing
Professional Boxing
Professional boxing, or prizefighting, emerged in the early twentieth century as boxing gradually attained legitimacy and became a regulated, sanctioned sport. Professional boxing bouts are fought for a purse which is divided among the fighters and promoters as determined by contract...
despite the commercial similarities between it and baseball.
Trial and appeal
Radovich and Alioto brought suit under the Clayton Act, which allows private parties to seek damages from unfair business practicesUnfair business practices
Unfair business practices encompass fraud, misrepresentation, and oppressive or unconscionable acts or practices by business, often against consumers and are prohibited by law in many countries. For instance, in the European Union, each member state must regulate unfair business practices in...
, against the NFL, all its member franchises
Franchising
Franchising is the practice of using another firm's successful business model. The word 'franchise' is of anglo-French derivation - from franc- meaning free, and is used both as a noun and as a verb....
, commissioner Bert Bell
Bert Bell
De Benneville "Bert" Bell was the National Football League commissioner from 1946 until his death in 1959. As commissioner, he helped chart a path for the NFL to facilitate its rise in becoming the most popular sports attraction in the United States...
the PCL (by then defunct) and its commissioner at the time, J. Rufus Klawans. He alleged he had been the victim of a group boycott
Group boycott
In competition law, a group boycott is a type of secondary boycott in which two or more competitors in a relevant market refuse to conduct business with a firm unless the firm agrees to cease doing business with an actual or potential competitor of the firms conducting the boycott...
intended to ruin the AAFC and sought $35,000 in damages. The defendants, primarily the NFL, argued in a pretrial motion that the antitrust exemption for baseball should apply equally to football, barring the lawsuit, and that even if it didn't, it should be dismissed for failure to state a cause of action
Demurrer
A demurrer is a pleading in a lawsuit that objects to or challenges a pleading filed by an opposing party. The word demur means "to object"; a demurrer is the document that makes the objection...
.
The district court
United 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...
accepted those arguments, as did 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...
. The latter distinguished football from boxing, which the Supreme Court had already denied the exemption, by noting that it and baseball were both team sports, unlike boxing.
Before the Court
The federal government filed an amicus curiaeAmicus 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 on their behalf, drafted by Solicitor General J. Lee Rankin
J. Lee Rankin
J. Lee Rankin was the 31st United States Solicitor General, from 1956 to 1961. In 1952, Rankin managed the Dwight Eisenhower for President campaign in Nebraska and in 1953, Eisenhower selected Rankin to serve as United States Assistant Attorney General.Known for his straightforward, quiet, and...
.Maxwell Keith wrote the Petition for Certiorari and the briefs before the Court on behalf of Mr. Radovich. He made the oral argument along with the Solicter General. Marshall Leahy and Bernard Nordlinger argued for the NFL.
Decision
Justice Tom C. ClarkTom 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 :...
wrote for the majority; there were no concurring opinions by the other justices. On the other side, 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...
wrote an opinion reiterating his dissent in International Boxing Club, and 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...
was joined by 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...
in another.
Majority
Clark reiterated that the Court's existing jurisprudence on the issue — Federal Baseball, Toolson and International Boxing — was explicit and clear that the exemption applied to baseball only. "As long as the Congress continues to acquiesce we should adhere to - but not extend - the interpretation of the Act made in those cases", he said. But "the volume of interstate business involved in organized professional football places it within the provisions of the Act." He admitted that this was at odds with the reality, but defended the reliance on a congressional remedy as a better process than a judicial one:He also found that Radovich had adequately stated a cause of action
Cause of action
In the law, a cause of action is a set of facts sufficient to justify a right to sue to obtain money, property, or the enforcement of a right against another party. The term also refers to the legal theory upon which a plaintiff brings suit...
, dismissing claims of frivolity and vagueness raised by the NFL. Broadcasting revenues were likely, if proven, to be enough of the defendants' business alone to come under the terms of 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...
. "This Court should not add requirements to burden the private litigant beyond what is specifically set forth by Congress", he concluded. "We think that Radovich is entitled to an opportunity to prove his charges."
Dissents
"The most conscientious probing of the text and the interstices of the Sherman Law", wrote Frankfurter, "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 was more concerned, however, with what he felt was undue respect for the doctrineLegal doctrine
A legal doctrine is a framework, set of rules, procedural steps, or test, often established through precedent in the common law, through which judgments can be determined in a given legal case. A doctrine comes about when a judge makes a ruling where a process is outlined and applied, and allows...
of stare decisis
Stare decisis
Stare decisis is a legal principle by which judges are obliged to respect the precedents established by prior decisions...
, a concern he had voiced in International Boxing. "Full respect for stare decisis does not require a judge to forego his own convictions promptly after his brethren have rejected them", he concluded.
Harlan, who had been part of the majority in Toolson and International Boxing, also saw the majority as purely arbitrary in his short dissent. "I am unable to distinguish football from baseball under the rationale of Federal Baseball and Toolson," he wrote, "and can find no basis for attributing to Congress a purpose to put baseball in a class by itself". He accused the majority of using "discriminatory fiat" to make "untenable distinctions" between the two sports.
Aftermath
With the case remanded for trial in the District Court, Maxwell Keith continued his representation who settled with the league for $42,500. Radovich said years later he believed Keith, who wanted him to drop the suit, "double-crossed" him. The settlement came after lengthy arguments between the two men over whether to proceed with the trial. Afterwards he says he learned Keith had been pressured to settle by the league."What I did opened doors", he said. "It's the first time that any professional sport was ever taken to court and beaten." He never worked in football again and died in 2002.
Alioto was later elected mayor of San Francisco for two terms. He and the NFL would meet again in antitrust court, most notably as adversaries when he successfully represented Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum
Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum
The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum is a large outdoor sports stadium in the University Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, at Exposition Park, that is home to the Pacific-12 Conference's University of Southern California Trojans football team...
Commission in its suit that cleared the way for the Oakland Raiders
Oakland Raiders
The Oakland Raiders are a professional American football team based in Oakland, California. They currently play in the Western Division of the American Football Conference in the National Football League...
' move to that city
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
. But he also successfully defended it against a suit brought by disgruntled Boston Patriots' quarterback
Quarterback
Quarterback is a position in American and Canadian football. Quarterbacks are members of the offensive team and line up directly behind the offensive line...
Joe Kapp
Joe Kapp
Joseph Robert Kapp is a former professional American and Canadian football quarterback. He is also a former college football head coach of the University of California, and a former general manager of the CFL's BC Lions. Kapp played primarily with the NFL's Minnesota Vikings and the CFL's BC Lions...
, and represented Philadelphia Eagles
Philadelphia Eagles
The Philadelphia Eagles are a professional American football team based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They are members of the East Division of the National Football Conference in the National Football League...
' owner Leonard Tose
Leonard Tose
Leonard Hyman Tose was an owner of the Philadelphia Eagles from 1969–1985. He made a fortune in the trucking industry and was known for his lavish lifestyle...
in an unsuccessful action against the bankers he alleged had conspired to try to force him to sell the team in the late 1970s.
Legacy
Bell lobbiedLobbying
Lobbying is the act of attempting to influence decisions made by officials in the government, most often legislators or members of regulatory agencies. Lobbying is done by various people or groups, from private-sector individuals or corporations, fellow legislators or government officials, or...
Congress to pass an antitrust exemption after the decision, and had almost succeeded before he died. His successor, Pete Rozelle
Pete Rozelle
Alvin Ray "Pete" Rozelle was the commissioner of the National Football League from January 1960 to November 1989, when he retired from office. Rozelle is credited with making the NFL into one of the most successful sports leagues in the world....
, continued the effort, but was only able to get limited exemptions to allow sharing of television revenues and, later, the merger
AFL-NFL Merger
The AFL–NFL merger of 1970 was the merger of the two major professional American football leagues in the United States at the time: the National Football League and the American Football League...
with the American Football League
American Football League
The American Football League was a major American Professional Football league that operated from 1960 until 1969, when the established National Football League merged with it. The upstart AFL operated in direct competition with the more established NFL throughout its existence...
(AFL). Since the Court's ruling means professional football is covered under antitrust law, the NFL has faced a number of competing leagues and lawsuits it would not otherwise be subject to.
Competing leagues
The AFL had been formed by Lamar HuntLamar Hunt
Lamar Hunt was an American sportsman and promoter of American football, soccer, basketball, and ice hockey in the United States and an inductee into three sports' halls of fame. He was one of the founders of the American Football League and Major League Soccer , as well as MLS predecessor the...
two years after Radovich was decided, and played for six seasons. The NFL could not use the same tactics it had against the AAFC, and the two leagues merged in 1966 to become the modern NFL. When the Dallas Cowboys
Dallas Cowboys
The Dallas Cowboys are a professional American football franchise which plays in the Eastern Division of the National Football Conference of the National Football League . They are headquartered in Valley Ranch in Irving, Texas, a suburb of Dallas...
were created to compete for the same market as Hunt's Dallas Texans
Kansas City Chiefs
The Kansas City Chiefs are a professional American football team based in Kansas City, Missouri. They are a member of the Western Division of the American Football Conference in the National Football League . Originally named the Dallas Texans, the club was founded by Lamar Hunt in 1960 as a...
, the AFL brought a suit that eventually led to the merger.
Today the AFL is considered the NFL's most successful competitor. To secure the antitrust exemption that made the merger possible, Rozelle promised Louisiana
Louisiana
Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
congressman Hale Boggs
Hale Boggs
Thomas Hale Boggs Sr. , was an American Democratic politician and a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New Orleans, Louisiana...
the NFL would expand into New Orleans, and the Saints
New Orleans Saints
The New Orleans Saints are a professional American football team based in New Orleans, Louisiana. They are members of the South Division of the National Football Conference of the National Football League ....
and Cincinnati Bengals
Cincinnati Bengals
The Cincinnati Bengals are a professional football team based in Cincinnati, Ohio. They are members of the AFC's North Division in the National Football League . The Bengals began play in 1968 as an expansion team in the American Football League , and joined the NFL in 1970 in the AFL-NFL...
were added to the league shortly thereafter.
In the 1970s the World Football League
World Football League
The World Football League was a short-lived gridiron football league that played in 1974 and part of 1975. Although the league's proclaimed ambition was to bring American football onto a worldwide stage, the farthest the WFL reached was placing a team – the Hawaiians – in Honolulu, Hawaii. The...
(WFL) took on the NFL. An apparently auspicious start, during a short players' strike, turned sour when it was discovered teams gave away many tickets, and soon the teams and their league were experiencing serious financial problems. After a season and a half it folded. The only two teams to have remained solvent applied to join the NFL as expansion team
Expansion team
An expansion team is a brand new team in a sports league. The term is most commonly used in reference to the North American major professional sports leagues, but is applied to sports leagues worldwide that use a closed franchise system of league membership. The term comes from the expansion of the...
s but were rejected.
The next decade brought the United States Football League
United States Football League
The United States Football League was an American football league which was in active operation from 1983 to 1987. It played a spring/summer schedule in its first three seasons and a traditional autumn/winter schedule was set to commence before league operations ceased.The USFL was conceived in...
(USFL), which played its season in the spring instead of fall. After three seasons of play during which it never had the same amount of teams and many franchises moved, it won an antitrust suit it had brought against the NFL, but the jury awarded it only the token amount of one dollar in damages. The owners then decided to fold the league as they could not afford to continue.
Since then only one other league has attempted to compete with the NFL. In 2001, NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
, shut out of its TV contract with pro football for the first time since the 1960s, formed the XFL
XFL
The XFL was a professional American football league that played for one season in 2001. The league was founded by Vince McMahon, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of WWE...
as a joint venture
Joint venture
A joint venture is a business agreement in which parties agree to develop, for a finite time, a new entity and new assets by contributing equity. They exercise control over the enterprise and consequently share revenues, expenses and assets...
with the World Wrestling Federation
World Wrestling Entertainment
World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. is an American publicly traded, privately controlled entertainment company dealing primarily in professional wrestling, with major revenue sources also coming from film, music, product licensing, and direct product sales...
. The league played one short season, during the months after the NFL season ended, and then folded.
Labor issues
The owners recognized the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA) because some congressmen and senators pointed to the nonunion status of the league to deny support for exemptions. The NFLPA and the league clashed in court over labor issues and antitrust law. First there was Kapp's lawsuit, which the league eventually won when it was reheard by a jury. Then Baltimore ColtsHistory of the Indianapolis Colts
The Indianapolis Colts are a professional football team based in Indianapolis, Indiana. They play in the AFC South division of the National Football League. They have won 3 NFL championships and 2 Super Bowls....
tight end
Tight end
The tight end is a position in American football on the offense. The tight end is often seen as a hybrid position with the characteristics and roles of both an offensive lineman and a wide receiver. Like offensive linemen, they are usually lined up on the offensive line and are large enough to be...
John Mackey
John Mackey (American football)
John Mackey was an American Football tight end who grew up in Roosevelt, Long Island and played for the Baltimore Colts and the San Diego Chargers . He played college football at Syracuse University...
sued to block enforcement of the "Rozelle Rule", by which teams that signed another team's free agent
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....
s were compensated with players or draft picks determined by the commissioner. His legal victory gave the players free agency, which their baseball counterparts had been denied by the Supreme Court
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...
, but the NFLPA bargained
Collective bargaining
Collective bargaining is a process of negotiations between employers and the representatives of a unit of employees aimed at reaching agreements that regulate working conditions...
it away in return for compensation to current and former players affected by the Rozelle Rule.
After the 1987 strike, the players won it back, but only after New York Jets
New York Jets
The New York Jets are a professional football team headquartered in Florham Park, New Jersey, representing the New York metropolitan area. The team is a member of the Eastern Division of the American Football Conference in the National Football League...
running back
Running back
A running back is a gridiron football position, who is typically lined up in the offensive backfield. The primary roles of a running back are to receive handoffs from the quarterback for a rushing play, to catch passes from out of the backfield, and to block.There are usually one or two running...
Freeman McNeil
Freeman McNeil
Freeman McNeil is a former professional American football player who was selected by the New York Jets in the 1st round of the 1981 NFL Draft....
filed a successful lawsuit that challenged the free agency provisions under the Sherman Act. Eventually the players got the current free agency system in return for a salary cap
Salary cap
In professional sports, a salary cap is a cartel agreement between teams that places a limit on the amount of money that can be spent on player salaries. The limit exists as a per-player limit or a total limit for the team's roster, or both...
.
The 1987 strike led to another antitrust action before the Supreme Court, Brown v. Pro Football, Inc. . Anthony Brown, a practice squad player for the Washington Redskins
Washington Redskins
The Washington Redskins are a professional American football team and members of the East Division of the National Football Conference in the National Football League . The team plays at FedExField in Landover, Maryland, while its headquarters and training facility are at Redskin Park in Ashburn,...
during the strike, challenged the teams' decision to unilaterally impose a $1,000 weekly maximum for practice players. This time, the NFL won, as the justices ruled 8-1 that groups of employers, as well as single employers, could implement a contract provision they had offered in good faith during an impasse
Impasse
A bargaining impasse occurs when the two sides negotiating an agreement are unable to reach an agreement and become deadlocked. An impasse is almost invariably mutually harmful, either as a result of direct action which may be taken such as a strike in employment negotiation or sanctions/military...
.
Third parties
Two other significant actions have been brought against the NFL on antitrust grounds. The first was from the North American Soccer LeagueNorth American Soccer League
North American Soccer League was a professional soccer league with teams in the United States and Canada that operated from 1968 to 1984.-History:...
(NASL), which challenged an NFL policy, never formally adopted, barring owners from having interests in other professional team sports. Rozelle had pushed for its inclusion as an amendment to the league constitution, believing that owners must be focused on football and could be in a conflict of interest
Conflict of interest
A conflict of interest occurs when an individual or organization is involved in multiple interests, one of which could possibly corrupt the motivation for an act in the other....
with the NFL if they owned franchises in other sports, since the other sports competed for disposable income with the NFL. Opposing them were Hunt, Miami Dolphins
Miami Dolphins
The Miami Dolphins are a Professional football team based in the Miami metropolitan area in Florida. The team is part of the Eastern Division of the American Football Conference in the National Football League...
' owner Joe Robbie and Edward Bennett Williams
Edward Bennett Williams
Edward Bennett Williams was a Washington, D.C. trial attorney who founded the law firm of Williams & Connolly and owned several professional sports teams...
, who at the time owned the Baltimore Orioles
Baltimore Orioles
The Baltimore Orioles are a professional baseball team based in Baltimore, Maryland in the United States. They are a member of the Eastern Division of Major League Baseball's American League. One of the American League's eight charter franchises in 1901, it spent its first year as a major league...
as well as the Redskins. Hunt had founded the Dallas Tornado
Dallas Tornado
Dallas Tornado were a soccer team based in Dallas that played in the NASL. They played from 1967 to 1981. Their home fields were Cotton Bowl , P.C. Cobb Stadium , Franklin Field , Texas Stadium and Ownby Stadium on the SMU campus...
, and owned part of the NBA
National Basketball Association
The National Basketball Association is the pre-eminent men's professional basketball league in North America. It consists of thirty franchised member clubs, of which twenty-nine are located in the United States and one in Canada...
Chicago Bulls
Chicago Bulls
The Chicago Bulls are an American professional basketball team based in Chicago, Illinois, playing in the Central Division of the Eastern Conference in the National Basketball Association . The team was founded in 1966. They play their home games at the United Center...
for a while. Robbie's wife owned the Fort Lauderdale Strikers, and Robbie himself warned that the policy was "an open invitation for a lawsuit under the Sherman Act".
The NASL brought suit against the NFL, arguing that its restrictions on cross-ownership were an unfair trade practice to deny other sports and leagues full access to the pool of experienced franchise owners. After losing in district court, it won on appeal but by then was in desperate straits, and folded two years later. The NFL's ownership policies were slightly modified; Rozelle never got the full limitations he wanted.
During that time, the most significant suit in modern NFL history was brought. The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission
Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum
The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum is a large outdoor sports stadium in the University Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, at Exposition Park, that is home to the Pacific-12 Conference's University of Southern California Trojans football team...
(LAMCC) sued the league over its provision requiring unanimous approval from other owners for franchise moves, which had otherwise hindered its efforts to conclude a lease with the Raiders
Oakland Raiders
The Oakland Raiders are a professional American football team based in Oakland, California. They currently play in the Western Division of the American Football Conference in the National Football League...
, then playing in Oakland
Oakland, California
Oakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state with a 2010 population of 390,724...
, where owner Al Davis
Al Davis
Allen "Al" Davis was an American football executive. He was the principal owner of the Oakland Raiders of the National Football League from 1970 to 2011...
was unhappy with the condition of Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum. Davis had also been incensed that the league had allowed the LA Coliseum's previous NFL team, the Los Angeles Rams, to move to Anaheim Stadium despite his abstention from the vote. His team began play in the LA Coliseum in 1981.
The LAMCC's suit was the NFL's most notable use of the "single entity" defense: that despite being composed of more than two dozen separate member teams it was one business for purposes of the Sherman Act. It failed both at trial and then in appeals court, and ultimately the Supreme Court denied 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...
in 1984. Shortly afterwards the Colts moved to Indianapolis
Indianapolis
Indianapolis is the capital of the U.S. state of Indiana, and the county seat of Marion County, Indiana. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city's population is 839,489. It is by far Indiana's largest city and, as of the 2010 U.S...
, the first of several franchise moves made possible by the invalidation of the NFL's ability to prevent them.
Criticism
The NFL's antitrust-related legal entanglements as a result of Radovich have led to suggestions that antitrust law cannot be applied to professional sports leagues in the same way they are applied to other businesses. In 1981, while testifyingTestimony
In law and in religion, testimony is a solemn attestation as to the truth of a matter. All testimonies should be well thought out and truthful. It was the custom in Ancient Rome for the men to place their right hand on a Bible when taking an oath...
before the House Judiciary Committees
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...
in support of another exemption bill
Bill (proposed law)
A bill is a proposed law under consideration by a legislature. A bill does not become law until it is passed by the legislature and, in most cases, approved by the executive. Once a bill has been enacted into law, it is called an act or a statute....
, Rozelle complained that "[L]eagues are regularly damned in antitrust if they do and damned in antitrust if they don't." He noted that at the time, the city of Oakland was planning to sue the NFL if it allowed the Raiders to move to Los Angeles, and the LAMCC was suing it for not allowing the move.
Rozelle's complaint received some support in the 1990s when sports-law expert Gary Roberts testified to Congress that sports-related antitrust decisions, including many of those above, had been "inconsistent, often unjustifiable, and generally counterproductive". In Brown, Justice Stephen Breyer
Stephen Breyer
Stephen Gerald Breyer is an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1994, and known for his pragmatic approach to constitutional law, Breyer is generally associated with the more liberal side of the Court....
'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....
acknowledged that "clubs that make up a professional sports league are not completely independent economic competitors, as they depend upon a degree of cooperation for economic survival."