Toolson v. New York Yankees
Case Date: 08/25/2024
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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,[1] 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.
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