Judge Sotomayor and Baseball’s Legal Nexus

Every discussion of Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s appointment to the Supreme Court acknowledges her most important decision may be the one that ended the baseball strike in 1995. She is not the first judge to intervene in baseball, but she has to be regarded as one of the game’s great legal heroes. But if she is elevated to the Supreme Court, will she get another turn at bat?

The 1994 season and World Series were cancelled by the impasse of owners and players and in February of 1995, that deadlock seemed intractable. President Clinton failed in White House meetings that month to force an agreement. The Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) then took their case to the National Labor Relations Board who referred the whole sordid affair to the Federal District Court in New York State.

There, Judge Sotamayor heard the case and with remarkable quickness and precision ruled in favor of the MLBPA on March 31. Her order restored the prior bargaining agreement that had been in place before the strike. She ordered the parties back to the bargaining table and from that decision point has come one of the longest runs of labor peace in the game.

When neither President Clinton, the Congress nor anyone else could coax the parties to settle, Judge Sotomayor stepped into the breach. She rescued the players and owners from themselves. But more importantly, she restored the game to fans. As many have said in recent days, she saved baseball.

It is notable that a decision in an arcane area of the law that many would regard as frivolous is her most public and memorable act as a judge. It is not a decision about abortion or more divisive issues that have thus far dominated the discussion–though doubtless we will hear about those–but a ruling about baseball. The scrutiny of the Judge will move on, but it has been refreshing to see baseball’s legal nexus drawn out of its shell for the first time in years.

It is clear in retrospect how lucky baseball was to come before Judge Sotomayor. Not because she is a fan, but because of the qualities she brings to her work. Writers and court analysts point to the case because it showcases “her precision with the facts,” as Brad Snyder called it in a phone call today. Snyder is the author of A Well-Paid Slave, Curt Flood’s Fight for Free Agency. His award-winning book is the most informative examination of baseball and the law that I can imagine. He now teaches at the University of Wisconsin Law School and is a former clerk to a federal judge.

Everyone knows by now that Judge Sotamayor is a huge Yankees fan, but what people overlook, according to Snyder, is how little that impacted her ruling. “She stayed with the facts.” In many of the famous legal cases in baseball, judges try to try to show off their knowledge of the game. When Flood’s case when to the Supreme Court, several justices showcased their knowledge of the game in the discussions before the bench.

Then of course there is Judge Landis. In the two landmark cases in which he was involved–Federal Baseball and the Blacksox Scandal–he could not divorce his role as a judge and as a fan. But with Sotomayor, “there was no pennant waving,” said Snyder. In the spring of 1995 she was all about the legal issue before her. It was an important one and she researched it quickly and thoroughly and did not let anything about being a fan affect her ruling.

As Snyder explained, she was asked to issue an injunction that would get the two sides back to the bargaining table. The test for issuing an injunction–according to Snyder–is whether “one side or the other will suffer irreparable harm if no injunction is issued.” The fans had suffered through the loss of a World Series. Montreal Expo fans had lost their only chance at a pennant. Tony Gwynn had lost his chance to become the first batter to hit .400 since Ted Williams.

Judge Sotomayor may not have included those concerns in her deliberations, but her reputation is for being thorough, so it is not outside the realm of possibility. Whether it was her intention or not, at the end of the day she chose to intervene on behalf of baseball’s fans and we have seldom had a better champion.

Brad Snyder credits his coverage of the baseball strike–he was working as a sports reporter with the Baltimore Sun–with changing his life. First, it convinced him to go to law school. But much of his work that winter was covering the Congressional hearings into baseball’s anti-trust exemption–Congress’ only leverage in the strike. Exploring that institutional oddity led him to the issues that formed the crux of his Curt Flood book.

I asked Snyder whether Judge Sotomayor might have any future chances to rule on baseball concerns if she is confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice. It is certainly possible, according to Snyder, that baseball’s anti-trust exemption could be litigated again at some point in the future. With all of the complex issues that affect how baseball revenues are distributed, someone may take a case to the Supreme Court. So I will consider baseball’s favorite jurist–Judge Sonia Sotomayor–to be in the on-deck circle, just hoping to get one more time at bat.