SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
Syllabus
ANTONY BROWN, ET AL., PETITIONERS v. PRO FOOTBALL, INC., DBA WASHINGTON REDSKINS, ET AL.
518 U.S. 231
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT.
No. 95-388. Argued March 27, 1996 -- Decided June 20, 1996
After their collective-bargaining agreement expired, the
National Football League (NFL), a group of football clubs, and the NFL Players
Association, a labor union, began to negotiate a new contract. The NFL presented
a plan that would permit each club to establish a "developmental
squad" of substitute players, each of whom would be paid the same $ 1,000
weekly salary. The union disagreed, insisting that individual squad members
should be free to negotiate their own salaries. When negotiations reached an
impasse, the NFL unilaterally implemented the plan. A number of squad players
brought this antitrust suit, claiming that the employers' agreement to pay them
$ 1,000 per week restrained trade in violation of the Sherman Act. The District
Court entered judgment for the players on a jury treble-damages award, but the
Court of Appeals reversed, holding that the owners were immune from antitrust
liability under the federal labor laws.
Held: Federal labor laws shield from antitrust attack an agreement among
several employers bargaining together to implement after impasse the terms of
their last best good-faith wage offer. Pp. 235-250.
(a) This Court has previously found in the labor laws an implicit, "nonstatutory"
antitrust exemption that applies where needed to make the collective-bargaining
process work. See, e. g., Connell Constr. Co. v. Plumbers, 421
U.S. 616, 622. The practice here at issue -- the postimpasse imposition of a
proposed employment term concerning a mandatory subject of bargaining -- is
unobjectionable as a matter of labor law and policy, and, indeed, plays a
significant role in the multiemployer collective-bargaining process that itself
comprises an important part of the Nation's industrial relations system.
Subjecting it to antitrust law would threaten to introduce instability and
uncertainty into the collective-bargaining process, for antitrust often forbids
or discourages the kinds of joint discussions and behavior that collective
bargaining invites or requires. Moreover, if antitrust courts tried to evaluate
particular kinds of employer understandings, there would be created a web of
detailed rules spun by many different nonexpert antitrust judges and juries, not
a set of labor rules enforced by a single expert body, the National Labor
Relations Board, to which the labor laws give primary responsibility for
policing collective bargaining. Thus, the implicit exemption applies in this
case. Pp. 235-242.
(b) Petitioners' claim that the exemption applies only to labor-management agreements
is rejected, since it is based on inapposite authority, and an exemption limited
by petitioners' labor-management-consent principle could not work. Pp. 243-244.
(c) Also rejected is the Solicitor General's argument that the exemption should
terminate at the point of impasse. His rationale, that employers are thereafter
free as a matter of labor law to negotiate individual arrangements on an interim
basis with the union, is not completely accurate. More importantly, the simple
"impasse" line would not solve the basic problem that labor law
permits employers, after impasse, to engage in considerable joint behavior,
while uniform employer conduct -- at least when accompanied by discussion --
invites antitrust attack. Pp. 244-247.
(d) Petitioners' alternative rule, which would exempt from antitrust's reach
postimpasse agreements about bargaining "tactics," but not those about
substantive "terms," is unsatisfactory because it would require
antitrust courts, insulated from the bargaining process, to delve into the
amorphous subject of employers' subjective motives in order to determine whether
the exemption applied. Pp. 247-248.
(e) Petitioners' arguments relating to general "backdrop" statutes and
the "special" nature of professional sports are also rejected. Pp.
248-250.
(f) The antitrust exemption applies to the employer conduct at issue here, which
took place during and immediately after a collective-bargaining negotiation;
grew out of, and was a directly related to, the lawful operation of the
bargaining process; involved a matter that the parties were required to
negotiate collectively; and concerned only the parties to the
collective-bargaining relationship. The Court's holding is not intended to
insulate from antitrust review every joint imposition of terms by employers, for
an employer agreement could be sufficiently distant in time and in circumstances
from the bargaining process that a rule permitting antitrust intervention would
not significantly interfere with that process. The Court need not decide in this
case whether, or where, to draw the line, particularly since it does not have
the detailed views of the Board on the matter. P. 250.
50 F. 3d 1041 , affirmed.
Breyer, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Rehnquist,
C. J., and O'Connor, SCALIA, Kennedy, Souter, Thomas, and Ginsburg, JJ., joined.
Stevens, J., filed a dissenting opinion, post, p. 252.