Collectively Bargained Age/Education Requirements: A Source of Antitrust Risk for Sports Club-Owners or Labor Risk for Players Unions?

Collectively Bargained Age/Education Requirements: A Source of Antitrust Risk for Sports Club-Owners or Labor Risk for Players Unions?

By Marc Edelman and Joseph A. Wacker.

115 Penn St. L. Rev. 341.

With both the NFL and NBA collective bargaining agreements expiring in 2011, America’s two premier winter sports leagues will soon need to renegotiate their terms and conditions of employment. In doing so, both leagues’ club-owners and players associations will bargain over the rules governing player eligibility, including their age/education requirements.

Sports leagues’ age/education requirements have long been a source of contention. Until recently, most leagues imposed their age/education requirements outside the scope of collective bargaining. However, after three courts found unilaterally implemented age/education requirements to violate Section 1 of the Sherman Act, the NFL and NBA shifted their age/education requirements into the realm of collective bargaining.

Whether these new, collectively bargained age/education requirements likewise violate the law is unclear. In the 2004 case Clarett v. Nat’l Football League, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals held that collectively bargained age/education requirements are exempt from antitrust scrutiny under the non-statutory labor exemption, but may be subject to review under labor law’s duty of fair representation. By contrast, in other circuits, sports leagues’ collectively bargained age/education requirements may still violate Section 1 of the Sherman Act if they primarily affect parties outside the scope of the collective bargaining relationship.

This article addresses both the antitrust and labor law risks of sports leagues’ collectively bargained age/education requirements.
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