American Needle, Inc. v. National Football League: Surprise! The Supreme Court Upholds an Existing Antitrust Doctrine*

[Editors’ note: This is the second in our series, What Is the Most Important U.S. Supreme Court Case in Your Area of the Law? The first installment is here. In this post, Prof. Waxman focuses on an important Supreme Court case from the last term.]

Last spring in American Needle, Inc. v. National Football League, 130 S. Ct. 2201 (2010), the United States Supreme Court reversed two lower court decisions and held that under Copperweld Corp. v. Independence Tube Corp., 467 U.S. 752 (1984), National Football League Properties (NFLP) was not a single entity but rather a collection of different entities with “independent centers of (business and economic) decision-making.” In Copperweld, the Court held that parties within a corporate entity or closely held affiliate (e.g. a wholly owned or controlled subsidiary) are to be treated as a single entity under the antitrust laws (despite the possible treatment as separate entities under corporation law) and therefore not subject to Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act. By its decision in Copperweld, the Court in effect invited parties that might otherwise be treated as more than one entity under the Sherman Act to assert that they fall under the “single entity” category. Historically, despite efforts by many sports leagues to try various business arrangements to fit under the single entity category, courts have denied regularly these assertions based on the understanding that the arrangements were really vehicles controlled by multiple parties with different corporate and economic interests.

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The Most Important Public Employment Law Case: Pickering v. Board of Education, 391 U.S. 563 (1968)

When most hear about public employment law, they believe the topic involves unions and collective bargaining between government employers and public employee unions.  This is not correct. Although public-sector labor law is an increasingly important area of inquiry given the robust union movement in the public sector, an equally important area concerns the constitutional rights of public employees.  This is public employment law. It is important area of the law both because only public employees, with a government employer, have the protections of the federal constitution under the state action doctrine and because of the sheer size of the public workforce in this country: currently around 23 million workers or about 17% of all workers in the United States.

So within this specialized area, I believe the most important case is the public employee free speech case of Pickering v. Board of Education, decided by the United States Supreme Court in 1968.  On October 8, 1964, the Board of Education of Township High School District 205 in Will County, Illinois, fired teacher Marvin Pickering for writing a blistering editorial about the Board and Superintendent in the local Lockport Herald on the previous September 24th.  The letter concerned a series of four tax referenda initiated and supported by the Board of Education which sought to allocate tax money for a variety of school-related purposes.  Pickering believed that the Board and Superintendent had bungled the matter and that tax money was better spent on teachers’ salary, funding for school lunches for non-athletes, and educational needs generally.

Not surprisingly, the Lockport School Board viewed Pickering’s public statements as insubordination. 

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What’s the Most Important U.S. Supreme Court Case in Your Area of the Law?

This week, in somewhat belated celebration of the commencement of another term of the U.S. Supreme Court, we will be doing another of our special series: Marquette Law faculty members will be posting about the most important Supreme Court case in a subject that they teach. First up later today will be Paul Secunda, who will be writing on the most important Supreme Court case in the area of public employment law.

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