Brown v. Pro Football

In 1987, the collective-bargaining agreement (CBA) between the National Football League (league) and the league’s Players Association (PA) expired. In early 1989, with negotiations ongoing, the league proposed to allow teams to maintain reserve squads of practice and replacement players (reserve players) in addition to regular 47-man rosters. Per the league’s proposal, the reserve players’ salaries would be set at fixed amounts rather than individually negotiated. By contrast, players on regular league rosters negotiated their salaries on a player-by-player basis. The PA adamantly opposed fixed salaries, insisting that all salaries had to be individually negotiated. Eventually, the league declared that negotiations had reached an impasse and unilaterally imposed its fixed-salary plan for reserve players. Antony Brown and eight other reserve players (plaintiffs) (players) brought a class-action suit against the league and its 28 member teams (collectively, NFL) (defendants), alleging that the fixed-salary program violated the Sherman Antitrust Act (Sherman Act). The NFL responded that it was immune from antitrust liability regarding the fixed-salary program due to the nonstatutory labor-law exception (labor exception) to the antitrust laws, under which collective-bargaining restraints on competition were not subject to antitrust scrutiny. The district court rejected the NFL’s postimpasse reliance on the labor exception. After a trial, the jury awarded the players damages of more than $30 million (with trebling). The NFL appealed, arguing that the labor exception embraced all restraints on competition arising from the collective-bargaining process, even restraints that were not in a prior CBA or that management imposed unilaterally postimpasse. The players countered that the labor exception was narrow and applied only if labor and management were working together, which could not be the case postimpasse.