Maurice Clarett's Case Summary

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For this assignment, we learned that Maurice Clarett filed a case against the NFL where he argued that the NFL’s three-year rule acted as an unreasonable restraint in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Clayton Act. On the other hand, the NFL argued that its three-year rule was covered from the antitrust laws by the nonstatutory labor exemption. First, the case was reviewed by the district court which concluded that the NFL's eligibility rules violated antitrust laws by requiring the player to wait at least three years before entering the NFL draft and that the eligibility criteria was not immune from those antitrust laws. The court favored Clarett making him eligible for the 2004 NFL Draft.
However, the NFL requested to the United States Court of Appeals to hear its motion and declared that Clarett was not eligible to participate in the draft anymore. The court decided to change the decision due to the fact that it was proved that the rules were part of the nonstatutory labor exemption, this last point was the main issue for this case. There was evidence that during his case, the NFL players union and the NFL Players Association (NFLPA) made a collective bargaining agreement which at that time did not include …show more content…

There were two main cases that play a very important role for each side. The first case supported Maurice Clarett side was the Mackey v. National Football League case which involved a challenge brought by NFL players to the League's so-called "Rozelle Rule." The court decided to rely on the Mackey case in order to hold that the nonstatutory exemption provides no protection over the NFL's eligibility rules. They believe that the eligibility rules fail to satisfy the main factors that were determined by the Mackey case. They also concluded that the rules exclude strangers to the CBAs and did not concern wages, hours or working conditions of current NFL

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