OCTOBER TERM, 1995

															Syllabus

															BROWN ET AL. v. PRO FOOTBALL, INC., DBA WASHINGTON
REDSKINS, ET AL.

															CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT No. 95-388. Argued March 27, 1996-Decided June 20,1996 After their collective-bargaining agreement expired, the
National Football League (NFL), a group of football clubs, and the
NFL Players Association, a labor union, began to negotiate a new
contract. The NFL presented a plan that would permit each club to
establish a "developmental squad" of substitute players, each of
whom would be paid the same $1,000 weekly salary. The union
disagreed, insisting that individual squad members should be free
to negotiate their own salaries. When negotiations reached an
impasse, the NFL unilaterally implemented the plan. A number of
squad players brought this antitrust suit, claiming that the
employers' agreement to pay them $1,000 per week restrained trade
in violation of the Sherman Act. The District Court entered
judgment for the players on a jury treble-damages award, but the
Court of Appeals reversed, holding that the owners were immune from
antitrust liability under the federal labor laws. Held: Federal labor laws shield from antitrust attack an
agreement among several employers bargaining together to implement
after impasse the terms of their last best good-faith wage offer.
pp.235-250.

															(a) This Court has previously found in the labor laws an
implicit, "nonstatutory" antitrust exemption that applies where
needed to make the collective-bargaining process work. See, e. g., Connell Constr. Co. v. Plumbers, 421 U. S. 616 ,
622. The practice here at issue-the postimpasse imposition of a
proposed employment term concerning a mandatory subject of
bargaining-is unobjectionable as a matter of labor law and policy,
and, indeed, plays a significant role in the multiemployer
collective-bargaining process that itself comprises an important
part of the Nation's industrial relations system. Subjecting it to
antitrust law would threaten to introduce instability and
uncertainty into the collective-bargaining process, for antitrust
often forbids or discourages the kinds of joint discussions and
behavior that collective bargaining invites or requires. Moreover,
if antitrust courts tried to evaluate particular kinds of employer
understandings, there would be created a web of detailed rules spun
by many different nonexpert antitrust judges and juries, not a set
of labor rules enforced by a single expert body, the 232 Syllabus

															National Labor Relations Board, to which the labor laws give
primary responsibility for policing collective bargaining. Thus,
the implicit exemption applies in this case. Pp. 235-242.

															(b) Petitioners' claim that the exemption applies only to
labormanagement agreements is rejected, since it is based on
inapposite authority, and an exemption limited by petitioners'
labor-managementconsent principle could not work. Pp. 243-244.

															(c) Also rejected is the Government's argument that the
exemption should terminate at the point of impasse. Its rationale,
that employers are thereafter free as a matter of labor law to
negotiate individual arrangements on an interim basis with the
union, is not completely accurate. More importantly, the simple
"impasse" line would not solve the basic problem that labor law
permits employers, after impasse, to engage in considerable joint
behavior, while uniform employer conductat least when accompanied
by discussion-invites antitrust attack. Pp. 244-247.

															(d) Petitioners' alternative rule, which would exempt from
antitrust's reach postimpasse agreements about bargaining
"tactics," but not those about substantive "terms," is
unsatisfactory because it would require antitrust courts, insulated
from the bargaining process, to delve into the amorphous subject of
employers' subjective motives in order to determine whether the
exemption applied. Pp. 247-248.

															(e) Petitioners' arguments relating to general "backdrop"
statutes and the "special" nature of professional sports are also
rejected. Pp. 248-250.

															(f) The antitrust exemption applies to the employer conduct at
issue here, which took place during and immediately after a
collectivebargaining negotiation; grew out of, and was a directly
related to, the lawful operation of the bargaining process;
involved a matter that the parties were required to negotiate
collectively; and concerned only the parties to the
collective-bargaining relationship. The Court's holding is not
intended to insulate from antitrust review every joint imposition
of terms by employers, for an employer agreement could be
sufficiently distant in time and in circumstances from the
bargaining process that a rule permitting antitrust intervention
would not significantly interfere with that process. The Court need
not decide in this case whether, or where, to draw the line,
particularly since it does not have the detailed views of the Board
on the matter. P. 250. 50 F.3d
1041 , affirmed.

															BREYER, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which
REHNQUIST, C. J., and O'CONNOR, SCALIA, KENNEDY, SOUTER, THOMAS,
and GINSBURG, JJ., joined. STEVENS, J., filed a dissenting opinion, post, p. 252. 233 Kenneth W Starr argued the cause for petitioners. With him on
the briefs were Paul T. Cappuccio, Steven G. Bradbury, Joseph A.
Yablonski, and Daniel B. Edelman.

															Deputy Solicitor General Wallace argued the cause for the United
States et al. as amicus curiae urging reversal. With him on the
brief were Solicitor General Days, Assistant Attorney General
Bingaman, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Klein, Paul R. Q. Wolfson, Robert J. Nicholson, Robert J. Wiggers, and David C. Shonka. Gregg H. Levy argued the cause for respondents. With him
on the brief were Herbert Dym, Sonya D. Winner, and Robert A. Long, Jr. * JUSTICE BREYER delivered the opinion of the Court.

															The question in this case arises at the intersection of the
Nation's labor and antitrust laws. A group of professional

															*Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were filed for
the National Hockey League Players Association et al. by Simon
P. Gourdine, Laurence Gold, Virginia A. Seitz, James W Quinn, and Jeffrey L. Kessler; and for the Screen Actors Guild,
Inc., et al. by David Alter. Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed for
the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers by Richard M. Cooper; for the American Trucking Associations by Mark I. Levy and Daniel R. Barney; for the Associated
General Contractors of America, Inc., by Charles E. Murphy,
John G. Roberts, Jr., and Michael E. Kennedy; for
the Bituminous Coal Operators' Association, Inc., by Charles P.
O'Connor, Peter Buscemi, and Stanley F. Lechner; for the Carriers Container Council, Inc., et al. by C. Peter
Lambos, Robert J. Attaway, Donato Caruso, and Robert S. Zuckerman; for the Chamber of Commerce of
the United States et al. by Zachary D. Fasman, Neal D. Mollen,
Jenny C. Wu, Stephen A. Bokar, Robin S. Conrad,
Jan S. Amundson, and Quentin Riegel; for the
League of Voluntary Hospitals and Homes of New York et al. by Howard L. Ganz and Steven C. Krane; for the
National Basketball Association by Jeffrey A. Michkin and Richard W Buchanan; for the National Electrical Contractors
Association, Inc., by Gary L. Lieber; for the National
Hockey League by Frank Rothman; for the National Railway
Labor Conference by Richard T. Conway, Ralph J. Moore, Jr., David P. Lee, and Joanna Moorhead; and
for the Office of the Commissioner of Baseball et al. by Randy
L. Levine and Thomas J. Ostertag. 234 football players brought this antitrust suit against football
club owners. The club owners had bargained with the players' union
over a wage issue until they reached impasse. The owners then had
agreed among themselves (but not with the union) to implement the
terms of their own last best bargaining offer. The question before
us is whether federal labor laws shield such an agreement from
antitrust attack. We believe that they do. This Court has
previously found in the labor laws an implicit antitrust exemption
that applies where needed to make the collective-bargaining process
work. Like the Court of Appeals, we conclude that this need makes
the exemption applicable in this case.

															I

															We can state the relevant facts briefly. In 1987, a
collective-bargaining agreement between the National Football
League (NFL or League), a group of football clubs, and the NFL
Players Association, a labor union, expired. The NFL and the
Players Association began to negotiate a new contract. In March
1989, during the negotiations, the NFL adopted Resolution G-2, a
plan that would permit each club to establish a "developmental
squad" of up to six rookie or "first-year" players who, as free
agents, had failed to secure a position on a regular player roster.
See App. 42. Squad members would play in practice games and
sometimes in regular games as substitutes for injured players.
Resolution G-2 provided that the club owners would pay all squad
members the same weekly salary.

															The next month, April, the NFL presented the developmental squad
plan to the Players Association. The NFL proposed a squad player
salary of $1,000 per week. The Players Association disagreed. It
insisted that the club owners give developmental squad players
benefits and protections similar to those provided regular players,
and that they leave individual squad members free to negotiate
their own salaries. 235 Two months later, in June, negotiations on the issue of
developmental squad salaries reached an impasse. The NFL then
unilaterally implemented the developmental squad program by
distributing to the clubs a uniform contract that embodied the
terms of Resolution G-2 and the $1,000 proposed weekly salary. The
League advised club owners that paying developmental squad players
more or less than $1,000 per week would result in disciplinary
action, including the loss of draft choices.

															In May 1990, 235 developmental squad players brought this
antitrust suit against the League and its member clubs. The players
claimed that their employers' agreement to pay them a $1,000 weekly
salary violated the Sherman Act. See 15 U. S. C. § 1 (forbidding
agreements in restraint of trade). The Federal District Court
denied the employers' claim of exemption from the antitrust laws;
it permitted the case to reach the jury; and it subsequently
entered judgment on a jury treble-damages award that exceeded $30
million. The NFL and its member clubs appealed.

															The Court of Appeals (by a split 2-to-1 vote) reversed.

															The majority interpreted the labor laws as "waiv[ing] antitrust
liability for restraints on competition imposed through the
collective-bargaining process, so long as such restraints operate
primarily in a labor market characterized by collective
bargaining." 50 F.3d
1041 , 1056 (CADC 1995). The court held, consequently, that the
club owners were immune from antitrust liability. We granted
certiorari to review that determination. Although we do not
interpret the exemption as broadly as did the Appeals Court, we
nonetheless find the exemption applicable, and we affirm that
court's immunity conclusion.

															II

															The immunity before us rests upon what this Court has called the
"nonstatutory" labor exemption from the antitrust laws. Connell
Constr. Co. v. Plumbers, 421 U. S. 616 , 622
(1975); see also Meat Cutters v. Jewel Tea Co., 381
U. S. 676 236 (1965); Mine Workers v. Pennington, 381 U. S. 657 (1965). The
Court has implied this exemption from federal labor statutes, which
set forth a national labor policy favoring free and private
collective bargaining, see 29 U. S. C. § 151; Teamsters v. Oliver, 358 U.
S. 283 , 295 (1959); which require goodfaith bargaining over
wages, hours, and working conditions, see 29 U. S. C. §§ 158(a)(5),
158(d); NLRB v. Wooster Div. of Borg- Warner Corp., 356 U. S. 342 ,
348-349 (1958); and which delegate related rulemaking and
interpretive authority to the National Labor Relations Board
(Board), see 29 U. S. C. § 153; San Diego Building Trades
Council v. Garmon, 359 U. S. 236, 242-245 (1959).

															This implicit exemption reflects both history and logic.

															As a matter of history, Congress intended the labor statutes
(from which the Court has implied the exemption) in part to adopt
the views of dissenting Justices in Duplex Printing Press
Co. v. Deering, 254 U. S. 443 (1921),
which Justices had urged the Court to interpret broadly a different explicit "statutory" labor exemption that Congress earlier
(in 1914) had written directly into the antitrust laws. Id., at 483-488 (Brandeis, J., joined by Holmes and Clarke, JJ.,
dissenting) (interpreting § 20 of the Clayton Act, 38 Stat. 738, 29
U. S. C. § 52); see also United States v. Hutcheson, 312 U. S. 219 ,
230236 (1941) (discussing congressional reaction to Duplex). In the 1930's, when it subsequently enacted the labor statutes,
Congress, as in 1914, hoped to prevent judicial use of antitrust
law to resolve labor disputes-a kind of dispute normally
inappropriate for antitrust law resolution. See Jewel Tea,
supra, at 700-709 (opinion of Goldberg, J.); Marine
Cooks v. Panama S. S. Co., 362 U. S. 365 , 370, n. 7
(1960); A. Cox, Law and the National Labor Policy 3-8 (1960); cf. Du plex, supra, at 485 (Brandeis, J., dissenting)
(explicit "statutory" labor exemption reflected view that
"Congress, not the judges, was the body which should declare what
public policy in regard to the industrial struggle demands"). The
implicit ("nonstatutory") exemption interprets the labor statutes
in 237 accordance with this intent, namely, as limiting an antitrust
court's authority to determine, in the area of industrial conflict,
what is or is not a "reasonable" practice. It thereby substitutes
legislative and administrative labor-related determinations for
judicial antitrust-related determinations as to the appropriate
legal limits of industrial conflict. See Jewel Tea, supra, at 709-710.

															As a matter of logic, it would be difficult, if not impossible,
to require groups of employers and employees to bargain together,
but at the same time to forbid them to make among themselves or
with each other any of the competitionrestricting agreements
potentially necessary to make the process work or its results
mutually acceptable. Thus, the implicit exemption recognizes that,
to give effect to federal labor laws and policies and to allow
meaningful collective bargaining to take place, some restraints on
competition imposed through the bargaining process must be shielded
from antitrust sanctions. See Connell, supra, at 622
(federal labor law's "goals" could "never" be achieved if ordinary
anticompetitive effects of collective bargaining were held to
violate the antitrust laws); Jewel Tea, supra, at 711
(national labor law scheme would be "virtually destroyed" by the
routine imposition of antitrust penalties upon parties engaged in
collective bargaining); Pennington, supra, at 665 (implicit
exemption necessary to harmonize Sherman Act with "national policy
... of promoting 'the peaceful settlement of industrial disputes by
subjecting labor-management controversies to the mediatory
influence of negotiation''') (quoting Fibreboard Paper Products
Corp. v. NLRB, 379 U. S. 203 , 211
(1964)).

															The petitioners and their supporters concede, as they must, the
legal existence of the exemption we have described. They also
concede that, where its application is necessary to make the
statutorily authorized collectivebargaining process work as
Congress intended, the exemption must apply both to employers and
to employees. 238 Accord, Volkswagenwerk Aktiengesellschaft v. Federal
Maritime Comm'n, 390 U. S. 261 , 287, n. 5
(1968) (Harlan, J., concurring); Jewel Tea, supra, at
729-732, 735 (opinion of Goldberg, J.); Brief for AFL-CIO as Amicus Curiae in Associated Gen. Contractors of Cal.,
Inc. v. Carpenters, O. T. 1981, No. 81-334, pp. 16-17;
see also P. Areeda & H. Hovenkamp, Antitrust Law' 229'd (1995
Supp.) (collecting recent Court of Appeals cases); cf. H. A.
Artists & Associates, Inc. v. Actors' Equity
Assn., 451 U. S.
704 , 717, n. 20 (1981) (explicit "statutory" exemption applies
only to "bona fide labor organization[s]"). Nor does the dissent
take issue with these basic principles. See post, at
253-254. Consequently, the question before us is one of determining
the exemption's scope: Does it apply to an agreement among several
employers bargaining together to implement after impasse the terms
of their last best good-faith wage offer? We assume that such
conduct, as practiced in this case, is unobjectionable as a matter
of labor law and policy. On that assumption, we conclude that the
exemption applies.

															Labor law itself regulates directly, and considerably, the kind
of behavior here at issue-the postimpasse imposition of a proposed
employment term concerning a mandatory subject of bargaining. Both
the Board and the courts have held that, after impasse, labor law
permits employers unilaterally to implement changes in pre-existing
conditions, but only insofar as the new terms meet carefully
circumscribed conditions. For example, the new terms must be
"reasonably comprehended" within the employer's preimpasse
proposals (typically the last rejected proposals), lest by imposing
more or less favorable terms, the employer unfairly undermined the
union's status. Storer Communications, Inc., 294 N. L. R. B.
1056, 1090 (1989); Taft Broadcasting Co., 163 N. L. R. B.
475, 478 (1967), enf'd, 395 F.2d
622 (CADC 1968); see also NLRB v. Katz, 369 U. S. 736 , 745, and
n. 12 (1962). The collective-bargaining proceeding itself must be
free of 239 any unfair labor practice, such as an employer's failure to have
bargained in good faith. See Akron Novelty Mfg. Co., 224 N.
L. R. B. 998, 1002 (1976) (where employer has not bargained in good
faith, it may not implement a term of employment); 1 P. Hardin, The
Developing Labor Law 697 (3d ed. 1992) (same). These regulations
reflect the fact that impasse and an accompanying implementation of
proposals constitute an integral part of the bargaining process.
See Bo nanno Linen Serv., Inc., 243 N. L. R. B. 1093, 1094
(1979) (describing use of impasse as a bargaining tactic), enf'd, 630 F.2d
25 (CAl1980), aff'd, 454 U. S. 404 (1982); Colorado-Ute Elec. Assn., 295 N. L. R. B. 607, 609 (1989),
enf. denied on other grounds, 939 F.2d
1392 (CAlO 1991), cert. denied, 504 U. S. 955 (1992).

															Although the case law we have cited focuses upon bargaining by a
single employer, no one here has argued that labor law does, or
should, treat multiemployer bargaining differently in this respect.
Indeed, Board and court decisions suggest that the joint
implementation of proposed terms after impasse is a familiar
practice in the context of multiemployer bargaining. See, e. g.,
El Cerrito Mill & Lumber Co., 316 N. L. R. B. 1005
(1995); Paramount Liquor Co., 307 N. L. R. B. 676, 686
(1992); NKS Distributors, Inc., 304 N. L. R. B. 338, 340-341
(1991), rev'd, 50 F.3d
18 (CA9 1995); Sage Development Co., 301 N. L. R. B.
1173, 1175 (1991); Walker Constr. Co., 297 N. L. R. B. 746,
748 (1990), enf'd, 928 F.2d
695 (CA5 1991); Food Employers Council, Inc., 293 N. L.
R. B. 333, 334, 345-346 (1989); Tile, Terazzo & Marble Contractors Assn., 287 N. L. R. B. 769, 772 (1987),
enf'd, 935 F.2d
1249 (CAll 1991), cert. denied, 502 U. S. 1031 (1992); Salinas Valley Ford Sales, Inc., 279 N. L. R. B. 679, 686,
690 (1986); Carlsen Porsche Audi, Inc., 266 N. L. R. B. 141,
152153 (1983); Typographic Service Co., 238 N. L. R. B. 1565 (1978); United Fire Proof Warehouse Co. v. NLRB, 356 F.2d
494 ,498-499 (CA7 1966); Cuyamaca Meats, Inc. v. Butchers' 240 and Food Employers' Pension Trust Fund, 638 F. Supp.885,
887 (SD Cal. 1986), aff'd, 827 F.2d
491 (CA9 1987), cert. denied, 485 U. S. 1008 (1988). We proceed
on that assumption.

															Multiemployer bargaining itself is a well-established,
important, pervasive method of collective bargaining, offering
advantages to both management and labor. See Appendix, infra, p. 251 (multiemployer bargaining accounts for more
than 40% of major collective-bargaining agreements, and is used in
such industries as construction, transportation, retail trade,
clothing manufacture, and real estate, as well as professional
sports); NLRB v. Truck Drivers, 353 U. S. 87 , 95 (1957) (Buffalo Linen) (Congress saw multiemployer
bargaining as "a vital factor in the effectuation of the national
policy of promoting labor peace through strengthened collective
bargaining"); Charles D. Bonanno Linen Service, Inc. v. NLRB, 454 U.
S. 404 , 409, n. 3 (1982) (Bonanno Linen) (multiemployer
bargaining benefits both management and labor, by saving bargaining
resources, by encouraging development of industry-wide worker
benefits programs that smaller employers could not otherwise
afford, and by inhibiting employer competition at the workers'
expense); Brief for Respondent NLRB in Bonanno Linen, O. T.
1981, No. 80931, p. 10, n. 7 (same); General Subcommittee on Labor,
House Committee on Education and Labor, Multiemployer Association
Bargaining and its Impact on the Collective Bargaining Process,
88th Cong., 2d Sess., 10-19, 32-33 (Comm. Print 1964) (same); see
also C. Bonnett, Employers' Associations in the United States: A
Study of Typical Associations (1922) (history). The upshot is that
the practice at issue here plays a significant role in a
collective-bargaining process that itself constitutes an important
part of the Nation's industrial relations system.

															In these circumstances, to subject the practice to antitrust law
is to require antitrust courts to answer a host of important
practical questions about how collective bargaining over 241 wages, hours, and working conditions is to proceed-the very
result that the implicit labor exemption seeks to avoid. And it is
to place in jeopardy some of the potentially beneficial
labor-related effects that multiemployer bargaining can achieve.
That is because unlike labor law, which sometimes welcomes
anticompetitive agreements conducive to industrial harmony,
antitrust law forbids all agreements among competitors (such as
competing employers) that unreasonably lessen competition among or
between them in virtually any respect whatsoever. See, e. g.,
Paramount Famous Lasky Corp. v. United States, 282 U. S. 30 (1930)
(agreement to insert arbitration provisions in motion picture
licensing contracts). Antitrust law also sometimes permits judges
or juries to premise antitrust liability upon little more than
uniform behavior among competitors, preceded by conversations
implying that later uniformity might prove desirable, see, e.
g., United States v. General Motors Corp., 384 U. S. 127 , 142-143
(1966); United States v. Foley, 598
F.2d 1323 , 1331-1332 (CA4 1979), cert. denied, 444 U. S. 1043
(1980), or accompanied by other conduct that in context suggests
that each competitor failed to make an independent decision, see, e. g., American Tobacco Co. v. United States, 328 U. S. 781 ,
809-810 (1946); United States v. Masonite Corp., 316 U. S. 265 ,
275 (1942); Interstate Circuit, Inc. v. United States,
306 U. S. 208, 226-227 (1939). See generally 6 P. Areeda,
Antitrust Law" 1416-1427 (1986); Turner, The Definition of
Agreement Under the Sherman Act: Conscious Parallelism and Refusals
to Deal, 75 Harv. L. Rev. 655 (1962).

															If the antitrust laws apply, what are employers to do once
impasse is reached? If all impose terms similar to their last joint
offer, they invite an antitrust action premised upon identical
behavior (along with prior or accompanying conversations) as
tending to show a common understanding or agreement. If any, or
all, of them individually impose terms that differ significantly
from that offer, they invite an unfair 242 labor practice charge. Indeed, how can employers safely discuss
their offers together even before a bargaining impasse occurs? A
preimpasse discussion about, say, the practical advantages or
disadvantages of a particular proposal invites a later antitrust
claim that they agreed to limit the kinds of action each would
later take should an impasse occur. The same is true of postimpasse
discussions aimed at renewed negotiations with the union. Nor would
adherence to the terms of an expired collective-bargaining
agreement eliminate a potentially plausible antitrust claim
charging that they had "conspired" or tacitly "agreed" to do so,
particularly if maintaining the status quo were not in the
immediate economic self-interest of some. Cf. Interstate
Circuit, supra, at 222-223; 6 Areeda, supra, , 1425. All
this is to say that to permit antitrust liability here threatens to
introduce instability and uncertainty into the collectivebargaining
process, for antitrust law often forbids or discourages the kinds
of joint discussions and behavior that the collective-bargaining
process invites or requires.

															We do not see any obvious answer to this problem. We recognize,
as the Government suggests, that, in principle, antitrust courts
might themselves try to evaluate particular kinds of employer
understandings, finding them "reasonable" (hence lawful) where
justified by collective-bargaining necessity. But any such
evaluation means a web of detailed rules spun by many different
nonexpert antitrust judges and juries, not a set of labor rules
enforced by a single expert administrative body, namely the Board.
The labor laws give the Board, not antitrust courts, primary
responsibility for policing the collective-bargaining process. And
one of their objectives was to take from antitrust courts the
authority to determine, through application of the antitrust laws,
what is socially or economically desirable collective-bargaining
policy. See supra, at 236-237; see also Jewel Tea, 381 U. S., at 716-719 (opinion of Goldberg, J.). 243 III

															Both petitioners and their supporters advance several
suggestions for drawing the exemption boundary line short of this
case. We shall explain why we find them unsatisfactory.

															A

															Petitioners claim that the implicit exemption applies only to
labor-management agreements-a limitation that they deduce
from case law language, see, e. g., Connell, 421 U. S., at
622 (exemption for "some union-employer agreements") (emphasis added), and from a proposed principle-that the exemption
must rest upon labor-management consent. The language, however,
reflects only the fact that the cases previously before the Court
involved collective-bargaining agreements, see id., at
619-620; Pennington, 381 U. S., at 660; Jewel Tea,
supra, at 679-680; the language does not reflect the
exemption's rationale, see 50 F. 3d, at 1050.

															Nor do we see how an exemption limited by petitioners' principle
of labor-management consent could work. One cannot mean the
principle literally-that the exemption applies only to
understandings embodied in a collectivebargaining agreement-for the
collective-bargaining process may take place before the making of
any agreement or after an agreement has expired. Yet a
multiemployer bargaining process itself necessarily involves many
procedural and substantive understandings among participating
employers as well as with the union. Petitioners cannot rescue
their principle by claiming that the exemption applies only insofar
as both labor and management consent to those
understandings. Often labor will not (and should not) consent to
certain common bargaining positions that employers intend to
maintain. Cf. Areeda & Hovenkamp, Antitrust Law , 229'd, at 277
("[J]oint employer preparation and bargaining in the context of a
formal multi-employer bargaining unit is clearly exempt").
Similarly, labor need not consent to certain tactics that this
Court has approved as part of the multiemployer 244 bargaining process, such as unit-wide lockouts and the use of
temporary replacements. See NLRB v. Brown, 380 U. S. 278 , 284
(1965); Buffalo Linen, 353 U. S., at 97.

															Petitioners cannot save their consent principle by weakening it,
as by requiring union consent only to the multiemployer bargaining
process itself. This general consent is automatically present
whenever multiemployer bargaining takes place. See Hi-Way
Billboards, Inc., 206 N. L. R. B. 22 (1973) (multiemployer unit
"based on consent" and "established by an unequivocal agreement by
the parties"), enf. denied on other grounds, 500
F.2d 181 (CA5 1974); Weyerhaeuser Co., 166 N. L. R. B.
299, 299-300 (1967). As so weakened, the principle cannot help
decide which related practices are, or are not, subject to
antitrust immunity.

															B

															The Government argues that the exemption should terminate at the
point of impasse. After impasse, it says, "employers no longer have
a duty under the labor laws to maintain the status quo," and "are
free as a matter of labor law to negotiate individual arrangements
on an interim basis with the union." Brief for United States et al.
as Amici Curiae 17. Employers, however, are not completely free at impasse to act
independently. The multiemployer bargaining unit ordinarily remains
intact; individual employers cannot withdraw. Bonanno Linen, 454 U. S., at 410-413. The duty to bargain survives; employers must
stand ready to resume collective bargaining. See, e. g.,
Worldwide Detective Bureau, 296 N. L. R. B. 148, 155 (1989); Hi-Way Billboards, Inc., supra, at 23. And individual
employers can negotiate individual interim agreements with the
union only insofar as those agreements are consistent with "the
duty to abide by the results of group bargaining." Bonanno
Linen, supra, at 416. Regardless, the absence of a legal "duty"
to act jointly is not determinative. This Court has implied
antitrust immunities 245 that extend beyond statutorily required joint action to
joint action that a statute "expressly or impliedly allows or
assumes must also be immune." 1 P. Areeda & D. Turner,
Antitrust Law' 224, p. 145 (1978); see, e. g., Gordon v. New York Stock Exchange, Inc., 422 U. S. 659 , 682-691
(1975) (immunizing application of joint rule that securities law
permitted, but did not require); United States v. National Assn. of Securities Dealers, Inc., 422 U. S. 694 , 720-730
(1975) (same).

															More importantly, the simple "impasse" line would not solve the
basic problem we have described above. Supra, at 241-242.
Labor law permits employers, after impasse, to engage in
considerable joint behavior, including joint lockouts and
replacement hiring. See, e. g., Brown, supra, at 289 (hiring
of temporary replacement workers after lockout was "reasonably
adapted to the achievement of a legitimate end-preserving the
integrity of the multiemployer bargaining unit"). Indeed, as a
general matter, labor law often limits employers to four options at
impasse: (1) maintain the status quo, (2) implement their last
offer, (3) lock out their workers (and either shut down or hire
temporary replacements), or (4) negotiate separate interim
agreements with the union. See generally 1 Hardin, The Developing
Labor Law, at 516-520, 696-699. What is to happen if the parties
cannot reach an interim agreement? The other alternatives are
limited. Uniform employer conduct is likely. Uniformity-at least
when accompanied by discussion of the matterinvites antitrust
attack. And such attack would ask antitrust courts to decide the
lawfulness of activities intimately related to the bargaining
process.

															The problem is aggravated by the fact that "impasse" is often
temporary, see Bonanno Linen, supra, at 412 (approving
Board's view of impasse as "a recurring feature in the bargaining
process, ... a temporary deadlock or hiatus in negotiations which
in almost all cases is eventually broken, through either a change
of mind or the application of economic force") (internal quotation
marks omitted); W. Sim- 246 kin & N. Fidandis, Mediation and the Dynamics of Collective
Bargaining 139-140 (2d ed. 1986); it may differ from bargaining
only in degree, see 1 Hardin, supra, at 691-696; Taft
Broadcasting Co., 163 N. L. R. B., at 478; it may be
manipulated by the parties for bargaining purposes, see Bonanno
Linen, supra, at 413, n. 8 (parties might, for strategic
purposes, "precipitate an impasse"); and it may occur several times
during the course of a single labor dispute, since the bargaining
process is not over when the first impasse is reached, cf. J.
Bartlett, Familiar Quotations 754:8 (16th ed. 1992). How are
employers to discuss future bargaining positions during a temporary
impasse? Consider, too, the adverse consequences that flow from
failing to guess how an antitrust court would later draw the
impasse line. Employers who erroneously concluded that impasse had not been reached would risk antitrust liability were they
collectively to maintain the status quo, while employers who
erroneously concluded that impasse had occurred would risk
unfair labor practice charges for prematurely suspending
multiemployer negotiations.

															The United States responds with suggestions for softening an
"impasse" rule by extending the exemption after impasse "for such
time as would be reasonable in the circumstances" for employers to
consult with counsel, confirm that impasse has occurred, and adjust
their business operations, Brief for United States et al. as Amici Curiae 24; by reestablishing the exemption once there
is a "resumption of goodfaith bargaining," id., at 18, n. 5;
and by looking to antitrust law's "rule of reason" to shield-"in
some circumstances"such joint actions as the unit-wide lockout or
the concerted maintenance of previously established joint benefit
or retirement plans, ibid. But even as so modified, the
impasserelated rule creates an exemption that can evaporate in the
middle of the bargaining process, leaving later antitrust courts
free to second-guess the parties' bargaining decisions 247 and consequently forcing them to choose their
collectivebargaining responses in light of what they predict or
fear that antitrust courts, not labor law administrators, will
eventually decide. Cf. Dallas General Drivers, Warehousemen and
Helpers, Local Union No. 745 v. NLRB, 355 F.2d
842 , 844-845 (CADC 1966) ("The problem of deciding when further
bargaining ... is futile is often difficult for the bargainers and
is necessarily so for the Board. But in the whole complex of
industrial relations few issues are less suited to appellate
judicial appraisal ... or better suited to the expert experience of
a board which deals constantly with such problems").

															C

															Petitioners and their supporters argue in the alternative for a
rule that would exempt postimpasse agreement about bargaining
"tactics," but not postimpasse agreement about substantive "terms,"
from the reach of antitrust. See 50 F. 3d, at 1066-1069 (Wald, J.,
dissenting). They recognize, however, that both the Board and the
courts have said that employers can, and often do, employ the
imposition of "terms" as a bargaining "tactic." See, e. g.,
American Ship Building Co. v. NLRB, 380 U. S. 300 , 316
(1965); ColoradoUte Elec. Assn., Inc. v. NLRB, 939 F.2d
1392 , 1404 (CAlO 1991), cert. denied, 504 U. S. 955 (1992); Circuit-Wise, Inc., 309 N. L. R. B. 905, 921 (1992); Hi-Way Billboards, 206 N. L. R. B., at 23; Bonanno
Linen, 243 N. L. R. B., at 1094. This concession as to joint
"tactical" implementation would turn the presence of an antitrust
exemption upon a determination of the employers' primary purpose or
motive. See, e. g., 50 F. 3d, at 1069 (Wald, J.,
dissenting). But to ask antitrust courts, insulated from the
bargaining process, to investigate an employer group's subjective
motive is to ask them to conduct an inquiry often more amorphous
than those we have previously discussed. And, in our view, a labor/
antitrust line drawn on such a basis would too often raise 248 the same related (previously discussed) problems. See supra, at 237, 241-242; Jewel Tea, 381 U. S., at 716
(opinion of Goldberg, J.) (expressing concern about antitrust
judges "roaming at large" through the bargaining process).

															D

															Petitioners make several other arguments. They point, for
example, to cases holding applicable, in collectivebargaining
contexts, general "backdrop" statutes, such as a state statute
requiring a plant-closing employer to make employee severance
payments, Fort Halifax Packing Co. v. Coyne, 482 U. S. 1 (1987), and a
state statute mandating certain minimum health benefits, Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. v. Massachusetts, 471 U. S. 724 (1985).
Those statutes, however, " 'neither encourage[d] nor discourage[d]
the collective-bargaining processes that are the subject of the
[federal labor laws].''' Fort Halifax, supra, at 21 (quoting Metropolitan Life, supra, at 755). Neither did those
statutes come accompanied with antitrust's labor-related history.
Cf. Oliver, 358 U. S., at 295-297 (state antitrust law
interferes with collective bargaining and is not applicable to
labor-management agreement).

															Petitioners also say that irrespective of how the labor
exemption applies elsewhere to multiemployer collective bargaining,
professional sports is "special." We can understand how
professional sports may be special in terms of, say, interest,
excitement, or concern. But we do not understand how they are
special in respect to labor law's antitrust exemption. We concede
that the clubs that make up a professional sports league are not
completely independent economic competitors, as they depend upon a
degree of cooperation for economic survival. National Collegiate
Athletic Assn. v. Board of Regents of Univ. of Okla., 468 U. S. 85 ,
101-102 (1984); App. 110-115 (declaration of NFL Commissioner). In
the present context, however, that circumstance 249 makes the league more like a single bargaining employer, which
analogy seems irrelevant to the legal issue before us.

															We also concede that football players often have special
individual talents, and, unlike many unionized workers, they often
negotiate their pay individually with their employers. See post, at 255 (STEVENS, J., dissenting). But this
characteristic seems simply a feature, like so many others, that
might give employees (or employers) more (or less) bargaining
power, that might lead some (or all) of them to favor a particular
kind of bargaining, or that might lead to certain demands at the
bargaining table. We do not see how it could make a critical legal
difference in determining the underlying framework in which
bargaining is to take place. See generally Jacobs & Winter,
Antitrust Principles and Collective Bargaining by Athletes: Of
Superstars in Peonage, 81 Yale L. J. 1 (1971). Indeed, it would be
odd to fashion an antitrust exemption that gave additional
advantages to professional football players (by virtue of their
superior bargaining power) that transport workers, coal miners, or
meat packers would not enjoy.

															The dissent points to other "unique features" of the parties'
collective-bargaining relationship, which, in the dissent's view,
make the case "atypical." Post, at 255. It says, for
example, that the employers imposed the restraint simply to enforce
compliance with league-wide rules, and that the bargaining
consisted of nothing more than the sending of a "notice," and
therefore amounted only to "so-called" bargaining. Post, at
256-257. Insofar as these features underlie an argument for looking
to the employers' true purpose, we have already discussed them. See supra, at 247-248. Insofar as they suggest that there was
not a genuine impasse, they fight the basic assumption upon which
the District Court, the Court of Appeals, petitioners, and this
Court rest the case. See 782 F. Supp. 125, 134 (DC 1991); 50 F. 3d,
at 1056-1057; Pet. for Cert. i. Ultimately, we cannot find a
satisfactory basis for distinguishing football players from 250 other organized workers. We therefore conclude that all must
abide by the same legal rules.

															***

															For these reasons, we hold that the implicit ("nonstatutory")
antitrust exemption applies to the employer conduct at issue here.
That conduct took place during and immediately after a
collective-bargaining negotiation. It grew out of, and was directly
related to, the lawful operation of the bargaining process. It
involved a matter that the parties were required to negotiate
collectively. And it concerned only the parties to the
collective-bargaining relationship.

															Our holding is not intended to insulate from antitrust review
every joint imposition of terms by employers, for an agreement
among employers could be sufficiently distant in time and in
circumstances from the collective-bargaining process that a rule
permitting antitrust intervention would not significantly interfere
with that process. See, e. g., 50 F. 3d, at 1057
(suggesting that exemption lasts until collapse of the
collective-bargaining relationship, as evidenced by decertification
of the union); El Cerrito Mill & Lumber Co., 316 N. L. R. B., at 1006-1007 (suggesting that "extremely long"
impasse, accompanied by "instability" or "defunctness" of
multiemployer unit, might justify union withdrawal from group
bargaining). We need not decide in this case whether, or where,
within these extreme outer boundaries to draw that line. Nor would
it be appropriate for us to do so without the detailed views of the
Board, to whose "specialized judgment" Congress "intended to leave"
many of the "inevitable questions concerning multiemployer
bargaining bound to arise in the future." Buffalo Linen, 353
U. S., at 96 (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Jewel
Tea, 381 U. S., at 710, n. 18.

															The judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed.

															It is so ordered. 251 APPENDIX TO OPINION OF THE COURT

															TABLE A

															Major Bargaining Units and Employment in Private Industry, by Type of Bargaining Unit, 1994. (Covers bargaining units of 1,000 or more
workers.) Number Percent Type Units Employment Units Employment I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 522 2,305,478 44 43 M&S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 664 3,040,159 56 57 Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,186 5,345,637 100 100 I = Multiemployer.

															M = One company, more than one location.

															S = One company, single location.

															Source: U. S. Dept. of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics,
unpublished data (Feb. 14, 1996) (available in Clerk of Court's
case file). TABLE B

															Major Multiemployer Collective Bargaining Units and Employment in Private Industry, by Industry, 1994. (Covers bargaining units of 1,000 or more
workers.) Number Percent Type Units Employment Units Employment All industries . . . . . . . . 522 2,305,478 100 100 Manufacturing. . . . . . . . 45 210,050 9 9 Food. . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 50,750 2 2 Apparel. . . . . . . . . . . 23 141,600 4 6 Other . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 17,700 2 1 Nonmanufacturing . . . . . 477 2,095,428 91 91 Mining . . . . . . . . . . . 2 267,500 (1) 3 Construction . . . . . . . 337 995,443 65 43 Railroads. . . . . . . . . . 12 189,183 2 8 Other transportation . . 20 156,662 4 7 Wholesale trade . . . . . 6 8,500 1 (1) Retail trade . . . . . . . . 37 314,100 7 14 Real estate . . . . . . . . 11 85,800 2 4 Hotels and motels. . . . 11 79,200 2 3 Business services . . . . 13 63,200 2 3 Health services . . . . . 8 65,100 2 3 Other . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 70,740 4 3 (1) = More than 0 and less than 0.05 percent.

															Source: U. S. Dept. of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics,
unpublished data (Apr. 17, 1996) (available in Clerk of Court's
case file). 252 JUSTICE STEVENS, dissenting.

															In his classic dissent in Lochner v. New York, 198 U. S. 45 , 75
(1905), Justice Holmes reminded us that our disagreement with the
economic theory embodied in legislation should not affect our
judgment about its constitutionality. It is equally important, of
course, to be faithful to the economic theory underlying broad
statutory mandates when we are construing their impact on areas of
the economy not specifically addressed by their texts. The unique
features of this case lead me to conclude that the Court has
reached a decision that conflicts with the basic purpose of both
the antitrust laws and the national labor policy expressed in a
series of congressional enactments.

															I

															The basic premise underlying the Sherman Act is the assumption
that free competition among business entities will produce the best
price levels. National Soc. of Professional Engineers v. United States, 435 U. S. 679 , 695
(1978). Collusion among competitors, it is believed, may produce
prices that harm consumers. United States v. SoconyVacuum
Oil Co., 310 U.
S. 150 , 226, n. 59 (1940). Similarly, the Court has held, a
marketwide agreement among employers setting wages at levels that
would not prevail in a free market may violate the Sherman Act. Anderson v. Shipowners Assn. of Pacific Coast, 272 U. S. 359 (1926).

															The jury's verdict in this case has determined that the
marketwide agreement among these employers fixed the salaries of
the replacement players at a dramatically lower level than would
obtain in a free market. While the special characteristics of this
industry may provide a justification for the agreement under the
rule of reason, see National Collegiate Athletic Assn. v. Board of Regents of Univ. of Okla., 468 U. S. 85, 100-104
(1984), at this stage of the proceeding our analysis of the
exemption issue must accept the premise that the agreement is
unlawful unless it is exempt. 253 The basic premise underlying our national labor policy is that
unregulated competition among employees and applicants for
employment produces wage levels that are lower than they should
be.1 Whether or not the premise is true in fact, it is surely the
basis for the statutes that encourage and protect the
collective-bargaining process, including the express statutory
exemptions from the antitrust laws that Congress enacted in order
to protect union activities.2 Those statutes were enacted to enable
collective action by union members to achieve wage levels that are
higher than would be available in a free market. See Trainmen v. Chicago R. & 1. R. Co., 353 U. S. 30 , 40
(1957).

															The statutory labor exemption protects the right of workers to
act collectively to seek better wages, but does not

															1 "The inequality of bargaining power between employees who do
not possess full freedom of association or actual liberty of
contract, and employers who are organized in the corporate or other
forms of ownership association substantially burdens and affects
the flow of commerce, and tends to aggravate recurrent business
depressions, by depressing wage rates and the purchasing power of
wage earners in industry and by preventing the stabilization of
competitive wage rates and working conditions within and between
industries." 29 U. S. C. § 151; R. Posner & F. Easterbrook,
Antitrust 31 (2d ed. 1981) ("The main purpose of labor unions is to
raise wages by suppressing competition among workers ... "); see
also Meat Cutters v. Jewel Tea Co., 381 U. S. 676 , 723 (1965)
(opinion of Goldberg, J.) ("The very purpose and effect of a labor
union is to limit the power of an employer to use competition among
workingmen to drive down wage rates and enforce substandard
conditions of employment").

															2 "The basic sources of organized labor's exemption from federal
antitrust laws are §§ 6 and 20 of the Clayton Act, 38 Stat. 731 and
738, 15 U. S. C. § 17 and 29 U. S. C. § 52, and the
Norris-LaGuardia Act, 47 Stat. 70, 71, and 73, 29 U. S. C. §§ 104,
105, and 113. These statutes declare that labor unions are not
combinations or conspiracies in restraint of trade, and exempt
specific union activities, including secondary picketing and
boycotts, from the operation of the antitrust laws. See United
States v. Hutcheson, 312 U. S. 219 (1941).
They do not exempt concerted action or agreements between unions
and nonlabor parties. Mine Workers v. Pennington, 381 U. S. 657 ,
662 (1965)." Connell Constr. Co. v. Plumbers, 421 U. S. 616 ,
621-622 (1975). 254 "exempt concerted action or agreements between unions and
nonlabor parties." Connell Constr. Co. v. Plumbers, 421 U. S. 616 ,
621-622 (1975). It is the judicially crafted, nonstatutory labor
exemption that serves to accommodate the conflicting policies of
the antitrust and labor statutes in the context of action between
employers and unions. Ibid. The limited judicial exemption complements its statutory
counterpart by ensuring that unions which engage in collective
bargaining to enhance employees' wages may enjoy the benefits of
the resulting agreements. The purpose of the labor laws would be
frustrated if it were illegal for employers to enter into
industrywide agreements providing supracompetitive wages for
employees. For that reason, we have explained that "a proper
accommodation between the congressional policy favoring collective
bargaining under the NLRA and the congressional policy favoring
free competition in business markets requires that some
union-employer agreements be accorded a limited nonstatutory
exemption from antitrust sanctions." Id., at 622.

															Consistent with basic labor law policies, I agree with the Court
that the judicially crafted labor exemption must also cover some
collective action that employers take in response to a
collective-bargaining agent's demands for higher wages. Immunizing
such action from antitrust scrutiny may facilitate collective
bargaining over labor demands. So, too, may immunizing concerted
employer action designed to maintain the integrity of the
multiemployer bargaining unit, such as lockouts that are imposed in
response to "a union strike tactic which threatens the destruction
of the employers' interest in bargaining on a group basis." NLRB v. Truck Drivers, 353 U. S. 87 , 93
(1957).

															In my view, however, neither the policies underlying the two
separate statutory schemes, nor the narrower focus on the purpose
of the nonstatutory exemption, provides a justification for
exempting from antitrust scrutiny collective action initiated by
employers to depress wages below the level 255 that would be produced in a free market. Nor do those policies
support a rule that would allow employers to suppress wages by
implementing noncompetitive agreements among themselves on matters
that have not previously been the subject of either an agreement
with labor or even a demand by labor for inclusion in the
bargaining process. That, however, is what is at stake in this
litigation.

															II

															In light of the accommodation that has been struck between
antitrust and labor law policy, it would be most ironic to extend
an exemption crafted to protect collective action by employees to
protect employers acting jointly to deny employees the opportunity
to negotiate their salaries individually in a competitive market.
Perhaps aware of the irony, the Court chooses to analyze this case
as though it represented a typical impasse in an unexceptional
multiemployer bargaining process. In so doing, it glosses over
three unique features of the case that are critical to the inquiry
into whether the policies of the labor laws require extension of
the nonstatutory labor exemption to this atypical case.

															First, in this market, unlike any other area of labor law
implicated in the cases cited by the Court, player salaries are
individually negotiated. The practice of individually negotiating
player salaries prevailed even prior to collective bargaining.3 The
players did not challenge the prevailing

															3 As the District Court explained: "The present case does not
involve any change in preexisting wage terms of either an active or
expired collective bargaining agreement. In fact, creation of the
developmental squads added a novel category of players to each NFL
club. These players were not treated under the salary terms
applicable to regular NFL players. Under the 1982 Collective
Bargaining Agreement, the NFL players were expressly given the
right to negotiate the salary terms of their contracts. 1982
Collective Bargaining Agreement at Article XXII, Plaintiffs'
Exhibits at 1. By contrast, the developmental squad contracts
indicates that the prospective developmental squad players had no
right to negotiate their own salary terms but instead were to
receive a fixed non-negotiable 256 practice because, unlike employees in most industries, they want
their compensation to be determined by the forces of the free
market rather than by the process of collective bargaining. Thus,
although the majority professes an inability to understand anything
special about professional sports that should affect the framework
of labor negotiations, ante, at 248-249, in this business it
is the employers, not the employees, who seek to impose a
noncompetitive uniform wage on a segment of the market and to put
an end to competitive wage negotiations.

															Second, respondents concede that the employers imposed the wage
restraint to force owners to comply with leaguewide rules that
limit the number of players that may serve on a team, not to
facilitate a stalled bargaining process, or to revisit any issue
previously subjected to bargaining. Brief for Respondents 4. The
employers could have confronted the culprits directly by stepping
up enforcement of roster limits. They instead chose to address the
problem by unilaterally preventing players from individually
competing in the labor market.

															Third, although the majority asserts that the "club owners had
bargained with the players' union over a wage issue until they
reached impasse," ante, at 234, that hardly constitutes a
complete description of what transpired. When the employers'
representative advised the union that they proposed to pay the
players a uniform wage determined by the owners, the union promptly
and unequivocally responded that their proposal was inconsistent
with the "principle" of individual salary negotiation that had been
accepted in the past and that predated collective bargaining.4 The
so-called "bar-

															salary of $1,000 per week. Plaintiffs' Exhibits at 8, 9, 15
& 28." 782

															4 In a memorandum summarizing his meeting with the union
representative, the owners representative stated, in part:

															"Gene [Upshaw] indicated he fully understood the developmental
squad but could not agree to any arrangement that eliminated the
right of any 257 gaining" that followed amounted to nothing more than the
employers' notice to the union that they had decided to implement a
decision to replace individual salary negotiations with a uniform
wage level for a specific group of players.5

															Given these features of the case, I do not see why the employers
should be entitled to a judicially crafted exemption from antitrust
liability. We have explained that "[t]he nonstatutory exemption has
its source in the strong labor policy favoring the association of
employees to eliminate competition over wages and working
conditions." Connell Constr. Co., 421 U. S., at 622. I know
of no similarly strong labor policy that favors the association of
employers to eliminate a competitive method of negotiating wages
that predates collective bargaining and that labor would prefer to
preserve.

															Even if some collective action by employers may justify an
exemption because it is necessary to maintain the "integrity of the
multiemployer bargaining unit," NLRB v. Brown, 380 U.
S. 278, 289 (1965), no such justification exists here. The
employers imposed a fixed wage even though there was no dispute
over the pre-existing principle that player salaries should be
individually negotiated. They sought only to prevent certain owners
from evading roster limits and thereby gaining an unfair advantage.
Because "the employer's interest is a competitive interest rather
than an interest in regulating its own labor relations," Mine
Workers v. Pennington, 381 U. S. 657 , 667
(1965), there would seem to be no

															player to negotiate his individual salary. Upshaw said that no
matter what salary level we proposed to pay developmental players,
whether it was our $1,000 weekly or a higher number, the union
would not 'in principle' permit two classes of players to exist,
one with individual bargaining rights and one without." App.
19-20.

															5 The unique features of this case presumably explain why the
National Labor Relations Board (Labor Board) can endorse the
position of the players in this case without fearing the adverse
impact on the bargaining process in the hypothetical cases that
concern the Court. Brief for United States et al. as Amici
Curiae 27, n. 10. 258 more reason to exempt this concerted, anticompetitive employer
action from the antitrust laws than the action held unlawful in Radovich v. National Football League, 352 U. S. 445 (1957).

															The point of identifying the unique features of this case is
not, as the Court suggests, to make the case that professional
football players, alone among workers, should be entitled to
enforce the antitrust laws against anticompetitive collective
employer action. Ante, at 249. Other employees, no less than
well-paid athletes, are entitled to the protections of the
antitrust laws when their employers unite to undertake
anticompetitive action that causes them direct harm and alters the
state of employer-employee relations that existed prior to
unionization. Here that alteration occurred because the wage terms
that the employers unilaterally imposed directly conflict with a
pre-existing principle of agreement between the bargaining parties.
In other contexts, the alteration may take other similarly
anticompetitive and unjustifiable forms.

															III

															Although exemptions should be construed narrowly, and judicially
crafted exemptions more narrowly still, the Court provides a
sweeping justification for the exemption that it creates today. The
consequence is a newly minted exemption that, as I shall explain,
the Court crafts only by ignoring the reasoning of one of our prior
decisions in favor of the views of the dissenting Justice in that
case. Of course, the Court actually holds only that this new
exemption applies in cases such as the present in which the parties
to the bargaining process are affected by the challenged
anticompetitive conduct. Ante, at 250. But that welcome
limitation on its opinion fails to make the Court's explanation of
its result in this case any more persuasive.

															The Court explains that the nonstatutory labor exemption serves
to ensure that "antitrust courts" will not end up substituting
their views of labor policy for those of either the 259 Labor Board or the bargaining parties. Ante, at 236-237.
The Court concludes, therefore, that almost any concerted action by
employers that touches on a mandatory subject of collective
bargaining, no matter how obviously offensive to the policies
underlying the Nation's antitrust statutes, should be immune from
scrutiny so long as a collectivebargaining process is in place. It
notes that a contrary conclusion would require "antitrust courts,
insulated from the bargaining process, to investigate an employer
group's subjective motive," a task that it believes too "amorphous"
to be permissible. Ante, at 247.

															The argument that "antitrust courts" should be kept out of the
collective-bargaining process has a venerable lineage. See Duplex Printing Press Co. v. Deering, 254 U. S. 443 , 483-488
(1921) (Brandeis, J., joined by Holmes and Clarke, JJ.,
dissenting). Our prior precedents subscribing to its basic point,
however, do not justify the conclusion that employees have no
recourse other than the Labor Board when employers collectively
undertake anticompetitive action. In fact, they contradict it.

															We have previously considered the scope of the nonstatutory
labor exemption only in cases involving challenges to
anticompetitive agreements between unions and employers
brought by other employers not parties to those agreements. Ante, at 243. Even then, we have concluded that the
exemption does not always apply. See Mine Workers v. Pennington, 381 U. S., at 663.

															As Pennington explained, the mere fact that an antitrust
challenge touches on an issue, such as wages, that is subject to
mandatory bargaining does not suffice to trigger the judicially
fashioned exemption. Id., at 664. Moreover, we concluded
that the exemption should not obtain in Pennington itself
only after we examined the motives of one of the parties to the
bargaining process. Id., at 667.

															The Court's only attempt to square its decision with Pennington occurs at the close of its opinion. It concludes
that 260 the exemption applies because the employers' action "grew out
of, and was directly related to, the lawful operation of the
bargaining process," "[i]t involved a matter that the parties were
required to negotiate collectively," and that "concerned only the
parties to the collective-bargaining relationship." Ante, at
250.

															As to the first two qualifiers, the same could be said of Pennington. Indeed, the same was said and rejected in Pennington. "This is not to say that an agreement resulting
from union-employer negotiations is automatically exempt from
Sherman Act scrutiny simply because the negotiations involve a
compulsory subject of bargaining, regardless of the subject or the
form and content of the agreement." 381 U. S., at 664-665.

															The final qualifier does distinguish Pennington, but only
partially so. To determine whether the exemption applied in Pennington, we undertook a detailed examination into whether
the policies of labor law so strongly supported the agreement
struck by the bargaining parties that it should be immune from
antitrust scrutiny. We concluded that because the agreement
affected employers not parties to the bargaining process, labor law
policies could not be understood to require the exemption.

															Here, however, the Court does not undertake a review of labor
law policy to determine whether it would support an exemption for
the unilateral imposition of anticompetitive wage terms by
employers on a union. The Court appears to conclude instead that
the exemption should apply merely because the employers' action was
implemented during a lawful negotiating process concerning a
mandatory subject of bargaining. Thus, the Court's analysis would
seem to constitute both an unprecedented expansion of a heretofore
limited exemption, and an unexplained repudiation of the reasoning
in a prior, nonconstitutional decision that Congress itself has not
seen fit to override. 261 The Court nevertheless contends that the "rationale" of our
prior cases supports its approach. Ante, at 243. As support
for that contention, it relies heavily on the views espoused in
Justice Goldberg's separate opinion in Meat Cutters v. Jewel Tea Co., 381 U. S. 676 (1965). At
five critical junctures in its opinion, see ante, at 236,
237-238, 242, 247248, the Court invokes that separate concurrence
to explain why, for purposes of applying the nonstatutory labor
exemption, labor law policy admits of no distinction between
collective employer action taken in response to labor demands and
collective employer action of the kind we consider here.

															It should be remembered that Jewel Tea concerned only the
question whether an agreement between employers and a union
may be exempt, and that even then the Court did not accept the
broad antitrust exemption that Justice Goldberg advocated. Instead,
Justice White, the author of Pennington, writing for Chief
Justice Warren and Justice Brennan, explained that even in disputes
over the lawfulness of agreements about terms that are subject to
mandatory bargaining, courts must examine the bargaining process to
determine whether antitrust scrutiny should obtain. Jewel Tea,
381 U. S., at 688-697. "The crucial determinant is not the form
of the agreement-e. g., prices or wages-but its relative
impact on the product market and the interests of union
members." Id., at 690, n. 5 (emphasis added). Moreover, the
three dissenters, Justices Douglas, Clark, and Black, concluded
that the union was entitled to no immunity at all. Id., at
735-738.

															It should also be remembered that Justice Goldberg used his
separate opinion in Jewel Tea to explain his reasons for dissenting from the Court's opinion in Pennington. He
explained that the Court's approach in Pennington was
unjustifiable precisely because it permitted "antitrust courts" to
reexamine the bargaining process. The Court fails to explain its
apparent substitution in this case of Justice Gold- 262 berg's understanding of the exemption, an understanding
previously endorsed by only two other Justices, for the one adopted
by the Court in Pennington. The Court's silence is all the more remarkable in light of the
patent factual distinctions between Jewel Tea and the
present case. It is not at all clear that Justice Goldberg himself
understood his expansive rationale to require application of the
exemption in circumstances such as those before us here. Indeed,
the main theme of his opinion was that the antitrust laws should
not be used to circumscribe bargaining over union demands. Jewel
Tea, 381 U. S., at 723-725. Moreover, Justice Goldberg proved
himself to be a most unreliable advocate for the sweeping position
that the Court attributes to him.

															Not long after leaving the Court, Justice Goldberg served as
counsel for Curt Flood, a professional baseball player who
contended that major league baseball's reserve clause violated the
antitrust laws. Flood v. Kuhn, 407 U. S. 258 (1972).
Although the Flood case primarily concerned whether
professional baseball should be exempt from antitrust law
altogether, see Federal Baseball Club of Baltimore, Inc. v. National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, 259 U. S. 200 (1922); Toolson v. New York Yankees, Inc., 346 U. S. 356 (1953), the
labor law dimensions of the case did not go unnoticed.

															The article that first advanced the expansive view of the
nonstatutory labor exemption that the Court appears now to endorse
was written shortly after this Court granted certiorari in Flood, see Jacobs & Winter, Antitrust Principles and
Collective Bargaining by Athletes: Of Superstars in Peonage, 81
Yale L. J. 1 (1971), and the parties to the case addressed the very
questions now before us. Aware of both this commentary, and, of
course, his own prior opinion in Jewel Tea, Justice Goldberg
explained in his brief to this Court why baseball's reserve clause
should not be protected from antitrust review by the nonstatutory
labor exemption. 263 "This Court has held that even a labor organization, the
principal intended beneficiary of the so-called labor exemption,
may not escape antitrust liability when it acts, not unilaterally
and in the sole interest of its own members, but in concert with
employers 'to prescribe labor standards outside the bargaining
unit[.]' And this is so even when the issue is so central to
bargaining as wages. Mine Workers v. Pennington, 381
U. S. at 668. Compare Meat Cutters v. Jewel Tea Co., 381 U. S. 676 (1965). See Ramsey v. Mine Workers, 401 U. S. 302 , 307 (1971)
....

															"The separate opinion on which respondents focus did express the
view that 'collective bargaining activity on mandatory subjects of
bargaining' is exempt from antitrust regulation, without regard to
whether the union conduct involved is 'unilateral.' Meat
Cutters v. Jewel Tea Co., 381 U. S. at 732 (concurring
opinion). But the author of that opinion agreed with the majority
that agreements between unions and nonlabor groups on hard-core
restraints like 'price-fixing and market allocation' were not
exempt. 381 U. S. at 733. And there is no support in any of the
opinions filed in Meat Cutters for Baseball's essential, if
tacit, contention that unilateral, hard-core anticompetitive
activity by employers acting alone-the present case-is somehow
exempt from antitrust regulation." Reply Brief for Petitioner in Flood v. Kuhn, O. T. 1971, No. 71-32, pp. 13-14.

															Moreover, Justice Goldberg explained that the extension of
antitrust immunity to unilateral, anticompetitive employer action
would be particularly inappropriate because baseball's reserve
clause predated collective bargaining. "This case is in fact much clearer than Pennington, Meat
Cutters, or Ramsey, for petitioner does not challenge
the fruits of collective bargaining activity. He seeks relief from
a scheme-the reserve system-which 264 Baseball admits has been in existence for nearly a century, and
which the trial court expressly found was 'created and imposed by
the club owners long before the arrival of collective bargaining.'" Id., at 14. I would add only that this case is in fact much clearer than Flood, for there the owners sought only to preserve a
restraint on competition to which the union had not agreed, while
here they seek to create one.

															Adoption of Justice Goldberg's views would mean, of course, that
in some instances "antitrust courts" would have to displace the
authority of the Labor Board. The labor laws do not exist, however,
to ensure the perpetuation of the Board's authority. That is why we
have not previously adopted the Court's position. That is also why
in other contexts we have not thought the mere existence of a
collectivebargaining agreement sufficient to immunize employers
from background laws that are similar to the Sherman Act. See Fort Halifax Packing Co. v. Coyne, 482 U. S. 1 (1987); Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. v. Massachusetts, 471 U. S. 724 (1985).6

															6 In Teamsters v. Oliver, 358 U. S. 283 (1959), we
held that a state antitrust law could not be used to challenge an
employer-union agreement. Justice White's opinion in Jewel
Tea explains, however, that Oliver held only that "[a]s
the agreement did not embody a '''remote and indirect approach to
the subject of wages" ... but a direct frontal attack upon a
problem thought to threaten the maintenance of the basic wage
structure established by the collective bargaining contract,' [358
U. S.], at 294, the paramount federal policy of encouraging
collective bargaining proscribed application of the state law." Jewel Tea Co., 381 U. S., at 690, n. 5.

															Moreover, in the petition for certiorari in Flood, Justice Goldberg explained that Oliver was not
controlling.

															"Petitioner has not addressed the contention advanced by
respondents at trial but not reached by the courts below, that the
reserve system is a matter for collective bargaining and hence
exempt from state and federal antitrust laws under Teamsters
Union v. Oliver, 358 U. S. 283 (1959), and Meat Cutters v. Jewel Tea Co., 381 U. S. 676 (1965).
Neither of these decisions holds that an employer conspiracy
to restrain trade is exempted from antitrust regulation where an
employee group has been implicated in the scheme. No Justice
participating in Meat Cutters dissented from the 265 IV

															Congress is free to act to exempt the anticompetitive employer
conduct that we review today. In the absence of such action, I do
not believe it is for us to stretch the limited exemption that we
have fashioned to facilitate the express statutory exemption
created for labor's benefit so that unions must strike in order to
restore a prior practice of individually negotiating salaries. I
therefore agree with the position that the District Court adopted
below. "Because the developmental squad salary provisions were a new
concept and not a change in terms of the expired collective
bargaining agreement, the policy behind continuing the nonstatutory
labor exemption for the terms of a collective bargaining agreement
after expiration (to foster an atmosphere conducive to the
negotiation of a new collective bargaining agreement) does not
apply. To hold that the nonstatutory labor exemption extends to
shield the NFL from antitrust liability for imposing restraints
never before agreed to by the union would not only infringe on the
union's freedom to contract, H. K. Porter Co. v. NLRB, 397 U. S. at 108 ... (one of fundamental policies of
NLRA is freedom of contract), but would also contradict the very
purpose of the antitrust exemption by not promoting execution of a
collective bargaining agreement with terms mutu- proposition that hard core 'anticompetitive commercial
restraint[s]' like 'price-fixing and market allocation'-and
petitioner would add group boycotts-were subject to antitrust
regulation even where bargained about. 381 U. S. 732-33 (concurring
opinion). As this Court unanimously warned in 1949, 'Benefits to
organized labor cannot be utilized as a eat's paw to pull
employer's chestnuts out of antitrust fires.' United States v. Women's Sportswear Mfr's Ass'n, 336 U. S. 460 , 464
(1949). See also Allen Bradley Co. v. Local No.3, 325
U. S. [797] (1945). Similar arguments by football were rejected by
this Court in Radovich [v. National Football League, 352 U. S. 445 (1957),] as 'without merit,' and the reserve systems of other
sports are now regulated by state and federal antitrust laws." Pet.
for Cert. in Flood v. Kuhn, O. T. 1971, No. 71-32, p.
21, n. 9. 266 ally acceptable to employer and labor union alike. Labor unions
would be unlikely to sign collective bargaining agreements with
employers if they believed that they would be forced to accept
terms to which they never agreed." 782 F. Supp. 125, 139 (DC 1991)
(footnote omitted). Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.

Summary: The Supreme Court ruled that federal labor laws protect employers from antitrust lawsuits when they implement proposed employment terms after reaching an impasse in collective bargaining negotiations. In this case, the National Football League (NFL) and its clubs were shielded from antitrust liability for their agreement to pay substitute players a fixed weekly salary, despite the players' claims that this restrained trade. The Court found that the labor laws implicitly exempt such practices from antitrust scrutiny to protect the collective bargaining process and avoid instability and uncertainty. Justice Stevens dissented, arguing that the exemption should only apply to labor-management agreements and that Congress could act to exempt employers' anticompetitive conduct.