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Health & Fitness

City Council Resolution on Dodger Ownership

The City Council resolved to lobby for changes in federal antitrust legislation that could eventually lead to public ownership of the Dodgers.

The major professional sports leagues  -- including the National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League and the National Football League (“MLB”) -- each adopted stringent rules and regulations that determine whether a team can go public.   The Green Bay Packers are the only non-profit, community-owned franchise in American professional sports major leagues.  http://www.packers.com/team/executive-committee.html.

The Cleveland Indians became the first Major League Baseball Team to go public in 1998. Investors quickly bought the certificates, and ownership became confidential in 2000.

The Sherman Act, held to be a legitimate exercise of federal power under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, 15 U.S.C. §§ 1-7, prohibits monopolies that restrict trade. 

The MLB sure looks like a monopoly that restricts trade but baseball has been exempt from antitrust laws since 1922, when the Supreme Court decision in Federal Baseball Club of Baltimore, Inc. v. National Baseball Clubs (259 U.S. 200 (1922)).   In a later case, the Supremes held that Congress had not meant to include baseball in the Sherman Act.  Congress, they held, had only meant to include people like Rockefeller and other robber baron types.  Toolson v. New York Yankees, Inc., (346 U.S. 356) (1953).

Congress passed the 1998 Curt Flood Act – legislation intended to eliminate the “baseball exception” to federal antitrust law -- but that Act didn’t help clarify much because Congress created a lot of exceptions.   One of those exceptions to the Curt Flood Act is franchise ownership.  At present, therefore, the MLB can restrict ownership without the government -- or a private attorney -- suing it for violation of antitrust law.   
 
On April 26, 2011, Janice Hahn presented a resolution to the City Council, which it adopted, that the City lobby for changes in federal legislation that would allow the Dodgers to become publicly owned. (11-0002-S71). 

Maybe the City of Los Angeles has more lobbying power in Congress than has the MLB, although the image that comes to mind is the old animation Bambi v. Godzilla.

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