The legal battle that began with a lawsuit filed by MLS players against the league in February of 1997 has finally ended. The last step in a series of defeats for the players came when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the plaintiff's appeal in Fraser v. Major League Soccer.
The original suit, initiated by the MLS Players' Association, a subsidiary of the NFL Players' Association, against MLS and the U.S. Soccer Federation claimed the league's single-entity ownership structure was illegal and that the Federation's sanctioning of MLS as the nation's only Division I league violated U.S. anti-trust statutes.
In April of 2000, U.S. District Judge George O'Toole threw out the NFLPA's claim regarding the legality of the single-entity structure. In December of 2000, a jury in O'Toole's court ruled MLS and U.S. Soccer weren't violating anti-trust statutes.
In April of 2001, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston affirmed the summary judgment and jury verdict in favor of MLS and U.S. Soccer, marking the players' third straight legal defeat.
''As I have stated throughout this process, Major League Soccer is pleased that these seven years of litigation are now behind us,'' said MLS Commissioner Don Garber. ''We are excited to concentrate on the tasks at hand, the foremost of which is working with our players and focusing on the continued development of professional soccer in the United States.''
The eight players who filed the class-action lawsuit were Ian Fraser, Steve Trittschuh, Sean Bowers, Mark Semioli, Rhett Harty, David Scott Vaudreuil, Mark Dodd and Mark Dougherty.
The players had opted to sue instead of pursuing collective bargaining. Defending the lawsuit has reportedly cost MLS more than $10 million.
In rejecting the players' antitrust claim, Judge O'Toole wrote: ''Game competition, without a doubt, is part of the league's entertainment product, not an indicator of divergent economic interests among operators. MLS is what it is. As a single entity, it cannot conspire or combine with its investors … and its investors do not combine or conspire with each other in pursuing the economic interests of the entity.''
As for the claim that the league and the U.S. Soccer Federation conspired to create a monopoly by sanctioning only one Division I league, the jury in 2000 said it was unlikely that competition would have achieved anything besides driving both leagues out of business. MLS testified it had lost $250 million in its first five seasons.
Critics of the players' legal action alleged that the NFL Players' Association was fueling the suit to set a precedent for its own sake while jeopardizing pro soccer in the United States.