Even as Major League Baseball reached an agreement Thursday to end a 99-day lockout of its players, one of the highest-ranking members of the U.S. Senate said he intends to look into a century-old Supreme Court ruling that enables the league to operate as a lawful monopoly.
Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told the Philadelphia Inquirer that he will seek a hearing to discuss revoking MLB’s exemption from the Sherman Antitrust Act. No other professional sports league was ever granted the same exemption, and it has allows MLB to conduct its business in ways that would be illegal in other industries.
“I want to have a hearing,” Durbin said in an interview Thursday. “It’s an interesting legal, political challenge as to how to treat baseball and whether baseball as an entity has a special treatment under the law and shouldn’t be treated as any other corporation when it comes to objectionable conduct. I think it’s time to ask those questions all over again.”
