WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court rejected the National Football League’s request for broad antitrust law protection Monday, saying that it must be considered 32 separate teams — not one big business — when selling branded items like jerseys and caps. “Although NFL teams have common interests such as promoting the NFL brand, they are still separate, profit-maximizing entities, and their interests in licensing team trademarks are not necessarily aligned,” said the retiring Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for a unanimous court.

The high court reversed a lower court ruling throwing out an antitrust suit brought against the league by one of its former hat makers, who was upset that it lost its contract for making official NFL hats to Reebok International Ltd.

American Needle Inc. sued, claiming the league violated antitrust law because all 32 teams worked together to freeze it out of the NFL-licensed hatmaking business and gave Reebok an exclusive 10-year license.

The company lost and appealed to the Supreme Court, but the NFL did as well, hoping to get broader protection from antitrust lawsuits.

American Needle’s antitrust lawsuit now heads back to the lower court. The NFL said in a statement released after the ruling Monday that it was confident it would ultimately be victorious.

In its statement, the NFL noted that the Supreme Court’s decision pertained only to merchandise and didn’t affect “collective bargaining, which is governed by labor law.”

“In today’s decision, the Supreme Court recognized that ’special characteristics’ of professional sports leagues, including the need for competitive balance, ‘may well justify’ business decisions that among independent competitors would otherwise be unlawful. The court noted that the NFL teams’ shared interest in making the league successful and cooperating to produce NFL football provide ‘a perfectly sensible justification for making a host of collective decisions,’” the NFL said.

Had the NFL won this case, it may have been able to — as one business entity — implement salaries for its players and its coaches instead of having the current system of individual players bargaining for deals. The biggest thing that came from this ruling on Monday is it could kick-start labor extension talks and prevent a lockout in 2011.

DeMaurice Smith, the NFLPA’s executive director, welcomed the ruling.

“Today’s Supreme Court ruling is not only a win for the players past, present and future, but a win for the fans. While the NFLPA and the players of the National Football League are pleased with the ruling, we remain focused on reaching a fair and equitable Collective Bargaining Agreement. We hope that today also marks a renewed effort by the NFL to bargain in good faith and avoid a lockout,” Smith said in a statement Monday.

Major League Baseball is the only professional sports league with broad antitrust protection. The National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League, the NCAA, NASCAR, professional tennis and Major League Soccer supported the NFL in this case, hoping the high court would expand broad antitrust exemption to other sports.

But Stevens said NFL teams directly compete on many levels. Citing the two teams in this year’s Super Bowl, the New Orleans Saints and the Indianapolis Colts, Stevens said that teams compete against each other “to attract fans, for gate receipts and for contracts with managerial and playing personnel.”

“Directly relevant to this case, the teams compete in the market for intellectual property,” Stevens said. “To a firm making hats, the Saints and the Colts are two potentially competing suppliers of valuable trademarks.”

American Needle was one of many companies that made NFL headgear until the league awarded an exclusive contract to Reebok. Lower courts threw out American Needle’s lawsuit, holding that nothing in antitrust law prohibits NFL teams from cooperating on apparel licensing so the league can compete against other forms of entertainment.

But the high court turned away that theory and sent American Needle’s antitrust lawsuit back to the lower court.

“Decisions by NFL teams to license their separately owned trademarks collectively and to only one vendor are decisions that ‘deprive the marketplace of independent centers of decisionmaking … and therefore of actual or potential competition,’” Stevens said.

Just because NFL teams have a single organization, the National Football League Properties, to jointly develop, license and market its logos, does not mean the NFL can escape antitrust scrutiny, Stevens said.

“If the fact that potential competitors shared in profits or losses from a venture meant that the venture was immune from” antitrust law, Stevens said, “then any cartel ‘could evade the antitrust law simply by creating a “joint venture” to serve as the exclusive seller of their competing products.’”

The argument that NFL teams also need each other to play an NFL season also doesn’t work, Stevens said. “A nut and a bolt can only operate together, but an agreement between nut and bolt manufacturers is still subject to” antitrust scrutiny, Stevens said.

The league argued that a court decision against it “would convert every league of separately owned clubs into a walking antitrust conspiracy” and bring legal challenges to any decisions that the teams make collectively like scheduling.

But Stevens disagreed.

“The fact that NFL teams share an interest in making the entire league successful and profitable, and that they must cooperate in the production and scheduling of games, provides a perfectly sensible justification for making a host of collective decisions,” he said.

The case is American Needle v. NFL, 08-661.

Courtesy of espn.com

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
FLORIDA v . POWELL

Certiorari to the Supreme Court of Florida

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No. 08–1175. Argued December 7, 2009—Decided February 23, 2010

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In a pathmarking decision, Miranda v. Arizona , 384 U. S. 436 , this Court held that an individual must be “clearly informed,” prior to custodial questioning, that he has, among other rights, “the right to consult with a lawyer and to have the lawyer with him during interrogation.”

After arresting respondent Powell, but before questioning him, Tampa Police read him their standard Miranda form, stating, inter alia : “You have the right to talk to a lawyer before answering any of our questions” and “[y]ou have the right to use any of these rights at any time you want during this interview.” Powell then admitted he owned a handgun found in a police search. He was charged with possession of a weapon by a convicted felon in violation of Florida law. The trial court denied Powell’s motion to suppress his inculpatory statements, which was based on the contention that the Miranda warnings he received did not adequately convey his right to the presence of an attorney during questioning. Powell was convicted of the gun-possession charge, but the intermediate appellate court held that the trial court should have suppressed the statements. The Florida Supreme Court agreed. It noted that both Miranda and the State Constitution require that a suspect be clearly informed of the right to have a lawyer present during questioning. The advice Powell received was misleading, the court believed, because it suggested that he could consult with an attorney only before the police started to question him and did not convey his entitlement to counsel’s presence throughout the interrogation.

Held:

1. This Court has jurisdiction to hear this case. Powell contends that jurisdiction is lacking because the Florida Supreme Court relied on the State’s Constitution as well as Miranda, hence the decision rested on an adequate and independent state ground. See Coleman v. Thompson , 501 U. S. 722 . Under Michigan v. Long , 463 U. S. 1032 , however, when a state court decision fairly appears to rest primarily on federal law, or to be interwoven with federal law, and the adequacy and independence of any possible state-law ground is not clear from the face of its opinion, this Court presumes that federal law controlled the state court’s decision. Although invoking Florida’s Constitution and precedent in addition to this Court’s decisions, the Florida court did not expressly assert that state-law sources gave Powell rights distinct from, or broader than, those delineated in Miranda . See Long , 463 U. S., at 1044. The state-court opinion consistently trained on what Miranda demands, rather than on what Florida law independently requires. This Court therefore cannot identify, “from the face of the opinion,” a clear statement that the decision rested on a state ground separate from Miranda . See Long , 463 U. S., at 1041. Because the opinion does not “indicat[e] clearly and expressly that it is alternatively based on bona fide separate, adequate, and independent [state] grounds,” Long, 463 U. S., at 1041, this Court has jurisdiction. Pp. 4–7.

2. Advice that a suspect has “the right to talk to a lawyer before answering any of [the law enforcement officers’] questions,” and that he can invoke this right “at any time … during th[e] interview,” satisfies Miranda . Pp. 7–13.

(a) Miranda requires that a suspect “be warned prior to any questioning … that he has the right to the presence of an attorney.” 384 U. S., at 479. This Miranda warning addresses the Court’s particular concern that “[t]he circumstances surrounding in-custody interrogation can operate very quickly to overbear the will of one merely made aware of his privilege [to remain silent] by his interrogators.” Id. , at 469. Responsive to that concern, the Court stated, as “an absolute prerequisite to interrogation,” that an individual held for questioning “must be clearly informed that he has the right to consult with a lawyer and to have the lawyer with him during interrogation.” Id. , at 471. While the warnings prescribed by Miranda are invariable, this Court has not dictated the words in which the essential information must be conveyed. See, e.g., California v. Prysock , 453 U. S. 355 . In determining whether police warnings were satisfactory, reviewing courts are not required to “examine [them] as if construing a will or defining the terms of an easement. The inquiry is simply whether the warnings reasonably ‘conve[y] to [a suspect] his rights as required by Miranda .’ ” Duckworth v. Eagan , 492 U. S. 195 . Pp. 7–9.

(b) The warnings Powell received satisfy this standard. By informing Powell that he had “the right to talk to a lawyer before answering any of [their] questions,” the Tampa officers communicated that he could consult with a lawyer before answering any particular question. And the statement that Powell had “the right to use any of [his] rights at any time [he] want[ed] during th[e] interview” confirmed that he could exercise his right to an attorney while the interrogation was underway. In combination, the two warnings reasonably conveyed the right to have an attorney present, not only at the outset of interrogation, but at all times. To reach the opposite conclusion, i.e., that the attorney would not be present throughout the interrogation, the suspect would have to imagine the counterintuitive and unlikely scenario that, in order to consult counsel, he would be obliged to exit and reenter the interrogation room between each query. Likewise unavailing is the Florida Supreme Court’s conclusion that the warning was misleading because the temporal language that Powell could “talk to a lawyer before answering any of [the officers’] questions” suggested he could consult with an attorney only before the interrogation started. In context, the term “before” merely conveyed that Powell’s right to an attorney became effective before he answered any questions at all. Nothing in the words used indicated that counsel’s presence would be restricted after the questioning commenced. Powell suggests that today’s holding will tempt law enforcement agencies to end-run Miranda by amending their warnings to introduce ambiguity. But, as the Federal Government explains, it is in law enforcement’s own interest to state warnings with maximum clarity in order to reduce the risk that a court will later find the advice inadequate and therefore suppress a suspect’s statement. The standard warnings used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation are admirably informative, but the Court declines to declare their precise formulation necessary to meet Miranda ’s requirements. Different words were used in the advice Powell received, but they communicated the same message. Pp. 9–13.

998 So. 2d 531, reversed and remanded.

Ginsburg, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Alito, and Sotomayor, JJ., joined, and in which Breyer, J., joined as to Part II. Stevens, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Breyer, J., joined as to Part II.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A police officer used a Taser gun to apprehend a fan who ran onto the field during a Phillies game Monday night, and the team and the police are investigating whether it was an appropriate use of force.

The fan, wearing a baseball cap, red T-shirt and khaki shorts, hopped a fence and scurried around the outfield, eluding two security officers in the bottom of the eighth inning against the St. Louis Cardinals. One officer used a Taser and the fan went down in a heap. Several Phillies placed gloves over their faces and appeared to be stifling laughter at the wild scene.

Phillies spokeswomen Bonnie Clark said the police department is investigating the matter and discussing with the team whether using the stun gun was appropriate.

Police spokesman Lt. Frank Vanore told The Philadelphia Inquirer police internal affairs will open an investigation to determine if the firing “was proper use of the equipment.”

Vanore was not made available to The Associated Press when a call was placed to the police department’s public affairs office late Monday night.

The teams said it’s the first time a Taser has been used by police to apprehend a spectator who ran onto the field.

The fan was 17-year-old male and he will be charged with criminal trespass and related offenses, the team said. The Phillies did not release his name because he is a juvenile.

-Courtesy of the Associated Press