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US: Baseball’s antitrust exemption upheld in appeals court

By  |  January 15, 2015

Baseball scored another legal win preserving its nearly century-old exemption from antitrust laws, setting the stage for an appeal to the Supreme Court by San Jose, Calif. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Major League Baseball’s exemption from antitrust laws in a suit filed by San Jose that seeks to clear the way for the Oakland A’s to move south to Silicon Valley.

The ruling sets the stage for San Jose to appeal to the Supreme Court. It remains to be seen whether that appeal is made, and the Supreme Court takes up only a fraction of the cases filed there.

The court said the scope of the Supreme Court’s previous holding “plainly extends to questions of franchise relocation” and that “only Congress and the Supreme Court are empowered to question” its vitality.

Full Content: Wall Street Journal

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