28 206 In re Haywood v. National Basketball Association. No. ____
| Decision Date | 01 March 1971 |
| Citation | 401 U.S. 1204,91 S.Ct. 672 |
| Parties | . 28 L.Ed.2d 206 In re HAYWOOD v. NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION. No. ____ |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
This is an application for a stay of an order issued by the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. It raises questions under the Sherman Act concerning the legality of the professional basketball college player draft. The hearing on the merits will be heard by the District Court for the Central District of California.
The Seattle club for which the applicant now plays basketball has joined in the request for the stay, while the NBA opposes.
Under the rules of the NBA a college player cannot be drafted until four years after he has graduated from high school. Players are drafted by teams in the inverse order of their finish during the previous season. No team may negotiate with a player drafted by another team.
Appellant played with the 1968 Olympic team and then went to college. Prior to graduation he signed with the rival American Basketball Association, but upon turning 21 he repudiated the contract, charging fraud. He then signed with Seattle of the NBA. This signing was less than four years after his high school class had graduated (thus leaving him ineligible to be drafted under the NBA rules). The NBA threatened to disallow the contract and also threatened Seattle's team with various sanctions.
Appellant then commenced an antitrust action against the NBA. He alleges the conduct of the NBA is a group boycott of himself and that under Fashion Originators' Guild v. FTC, 312 U.S. 457, 61 S.Ct. 703, 85 L.Ed. 949, and Klor's v. Broadway-Hale Stores, 359 U.S. 207, 79 S.Ct. 705, 3 L.Ed.2d 741, it is a per se violation of the Sherman Act. He was granted an injunction pendente lite which allowed him to play for Seattle and forbade NBA to take sanctions against the Seattle team. The District Court ruled:
'If Haywood is unable to continue to play professional basketball for Seattle, he will suffer irreparable injury in that a substantial part of his playing career will have been dissipated, his physical condition, skills and coordination will deteriorate from lack of high-level competition, his public acceptance as a super star will diminish to the detriment of his career, his self-esteem and his pride will have been injured and a great injustice will be perpetrated on him.'
The college player draft binds the player to the team selected. Basketball, however, does not enjoy exemption from the antitrust laws. Thus the decision in this suit would be similar to the one on baseball's reserve clause which our decisions exempting baseball from the antitrust laws have foreclosed. See Federal Baseball Club v. National...
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