Legal Research

Linda Greenhouse reports that the Supreme Court has rejected Major League Baseball's appeal in its case seeking to require fantasy baseball leagues to pay licensing fees for using MLB's player names and stats.

In its appeal to the Supreme Court, Major League Baseball Advanced Media argued that in balancing the right of publicity against the First Amendment, the appeals court had given too much weight to the First Amendment.

The ?right of publicity? is a concept based on state law ? in this instance, Missouri law ? and the appeal argued that the federal appeals court had ignored the way the Missouri state courts would have approached the issue. The decision ?resulted in a judicial refusal to enforce state-law publicity rights,? the appeal said.

Back in April, the New York Personal Injury Blog reported that three of the Justices--Alito, Breyer, and Stephens--recused themselves from the case due to their participation in the high courts fantasy baseball league, Articles for Deletion.  However, Justices Ginsburg and Scalia, who play on the same team in the fantasy league along with a federal marshall, did not recuse themselves.

For more baseball-Supreme Court fun, check out Oyez Baseball, an online game that combines baseball and legal trivia.  I would imagine the Justices would be quite good at it!