Major League Baseball owners desperately want a salary cap. Major League Baseball players insist they won’t agree to one under any circumstance.
This seemingly intractable conflict is at the heart of the looming work stoppage that threatens to derail the 2027 season.
And as the Dec. 1 expiration of the current collective bargaining agreement draws near, MLB is preparing for the dispute to move beyond the bargaining table and into a federal courtroom, people familiar with the matter said.
The players could respond to the lockout by deploying a complex, largely unsettled legal maneuver with potentially significant ramifications. It’s called a disclaimer of interest—and it is a tactic other sports unions have used to try to gain leverage in labor negotiations for decades.
Here’s how it works: To disclaim interest, the Major League Baseball Players Association would declare that it was no longer representing the players as a union and instead reconstitute as a trade association. This move would relinquish the players’ protections under labor law but would potentially strip MLB of what’s known as the nonstatutory labor exemption, a judicial doctrine that shields collectively bargained terms from antitrust lawsuits.
That approach would allow players to sue MLB on antitrust grounds and argue that outside of a collective bargaining framework, the lockout is an illegal group boycott. The possibility of litigation presents substantial financial risk to the owners. Losing an antitrust case could require them to pay treble damages, or three times the players’ proven losses.
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HT: Brian
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