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Issue: Major League Baseball

Court allows minor league players to sue for minimum wage violations

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A federal appeals court has given a key victory to players on minor league baseball teams the right to sue to be paid the minimum wage while they’re in spring training in Arizona.

In an extensive ruling, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that the players are entitled to pursue a class-action lawsuit to show that the 15 teams that train here were not obeying minimum wage laws. That specifically includes Arizona law which currently mandates that all employees get at least $11 an hour, a figure that goes up to $12 in January.

Friday’s ruling comes seven months after Rep. T.J. Shope, R-Coolidge, attempted to undermine at least part of the players’ claims by seeking to amend state law to exempt baseball teams, including the Arizona Diamondbacks, from the voter-approved laws that mandate what employees must be paid. That measure also effectively would have let teams work their minor league players as much as they want without having to worry about overtime or, in some cases, paying them at all.

T.J.Shope
T.J.Shope

That measure died amid legal questions about whether Arizona lawmakers had the power to alter what voters had approved.

Garrett Broshuis who represents minor league players, told Capitol Media Services he did not know how much money is at stake in terms of missed pay for work already done.

“You have players that are required to report to spring training every spring and they have to work for no pay there,” he said. “We believe that is fundamentally unfair and that no worker should be forced to work for free.”

But he said part of the focus now is changing the rules for future players. And Broshuis said that the financial hit to teams with payrolls of more than $100 million a year should not break them.

Messages left with a spokesman for Major League Baseball and the lead attorney defending the teams were not immediately returned.

Central to the dispute is that most major professional sports in this country have their own “farm system” to develop talent. For baseball, according to court records, it’s an extensive minor league system with nearly 200 affiliates across the country employing about 6,000 players.

All minor league players are required to sign a seven-year Uniform Player Contract, which spells out that first-year players are paid a fixed salary of $1,100 a month during the regular season.

But beginning in early March, the minor league affiliates conduct spring training in Arizona and Florida. And appellate Judge Richard Paez, writing for the majority, said that contract “strongly indicates” that participation is mandatory.

More to the point, virtually all players are not paid during the four-week period, with some players saying that training entails working seven days a week. There also are “instructional leagues” after the regular season, with Paez saying that the contract strongly implies that participation is required.

In this March 5, 2018, file photo, Colorado Rockies' DJ LeMahieu bats during a spring baseball game against the Chicago Cubs, in Scottsdale. Major League Baseball is seeking an exemption of baseball players from Arizona’s minimum wage law at the Legislature. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson, File)
In this March 5, 2018, file photo, Colorado Rockies’ DJ LeMahieu bats during a spring baseball game against the Chicago Cubs, in Scottsdale. Major League Baseball is seeking an exemption of baseball players from Arizona’s minimum wage law at the Legislature. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson, File)

“And just as with spring training, players are virtually never paid for participation in the instructional league,” he wrote.

In fact, Paez, a President Clinton appointee, said that of the 21,211 players who participated in spring training between the 2009 and 2015 seasons, only 11 were paid a salary.

That led to the class-action lawsuit against Major League Baseball and all the teams charging them with violating labor laws in Arizona, Florida and California, with more than 2,200 current and former minor league players opting in.

Attorneys for the league and the teams sought to quash the class-action move, arguing among other things that players from teams across the country should not be able to argue that they are entitled to the protections of Arizona’s laws, which have a higher minimum wage than required under federal laws. Paez rejected that contention.

“The laws of Arizona and Florida should apply to the work performed wholly within their respective boundaries,” he wrote.

Paez also said that the heart of the case involves minimum wage violations. That, he said, means that liability can be established simply by showing that the players performed “any compensable work.”

And he specifically noted that, under Arizona law, the failure of an employer to keep appropriate records of hours worked “raises a rebuttable presumption that the employer did not pay the required minimum wage.”

Friday’s ruling clearing the way for the class-action lawsuit does not mean the players ultimately will win.

Richard Paez
Richard Paez

Paez said the case will come down to two questions: Are they employees, and do the activities they perform during those times constitute “compensable work.”

“As nearly all players are unpaid during these time periods, if the answer to those two questions are resolved in plaintiffs’ favor, liability may be established by showing that the players performed any work,” he wrote.

Shope’s bill sought to exempt the players from the state minimum wage. On paper, that would have left them subject only to federal law.

But last year lobbyists for Major League Baseball pushed a measure through Congress dubbed the “Saving America’s Pastime Act” which exempts teams from all federal wage laws as long as they pay the players at least $290 a week. That’s the equivalent to $7.25 an hour for a 40-hour week – the federal minimum wage – but with a specific exemption from overtime, meaning they can force the players to work as many hours as they want for that $290.

That change was buried on page 1,967 of a $1.3 trillion spending bill signed into law by President Trump.

Shope, the House speaker pro-tem, said he was sponsoring HB 2180 at the behest of lobbyists here for Major League Baseball. He said they told him there are reasons that it makes no sense to try to reduce player pay to an hourly basis.

Ducey won’t tip hand on whether he’ll sign controversial election bills

Gov. Doug Ducey explains Thursday how any decision he makes on signing bills to impose new voting restrictions will be based on what he considers "good policy" and not based on opposition from the business leaders -- or the sports community. (Capitol Media Services photo by Howard Fischer)
Gov. Doug Ducey explains Thursday how any decision he makes on signing bills to impose new voting restrictions will be based on what he considers “good policy” and not based on opposition from the business leaders — or the sports community. (Capitol Media Services photo by Howard Fischer)

Gov. Doug Ducey said Thursday his decision on whether to sign some controversial voting bills won’t be swayed by fears of losing the 2023 Super Bowl.

And he took a slap at Major League Baseball for its decision to yank the All-Star Game out of Georgia following enactment of its own new voter laws.

“I’m going to sign good policy,” the governor said when asked about the possibility of repercussions from laws that some have said will interfere with the right of Arizonans to vote. Among those groups is Greater Phoenix Leadership which sent a letter to state lawmakers saying that three specific proposal “seek to disenfranchise voters.”

“They are ‘solutions’ in search of a problem,” wrote members of the organization. “They are attempts at voter suppression cloaked as reform — plain and simple.”

What makes that letter significant and relevant to the Georgia situation is that one of the signers is Michael Bidwill, owner of the Arizona Cardinals. And as an owner he would have some say in any decision by the National Football League about whether to move the 2023 event elsewhere.

It’s not just the Super Bowl that is at stake. Arizona also is in line to host the NCAA Men’s Final Four in 2024 and the Women’s Final Four two years later.

And the NCAA has shown before it is willing to use its leverage to address political situations, as it did in 2016 when it disqualified North Carolina from hosting championship events after approval of legislation requiring transgender people to use bathrooms matching the sex on their birth certificate rather than their gender identity. The punishment was reversed the following year when the legislature repealed the law.

Ducey made it clear on Thursday that he thinks sports teams and their associations should stick to what they know.

“I think Major League Baseball made a big mistake,” he said.

“I’d like to keep politics out of baseball,” the governor continued. “That’s how I’d prefer it.”

And what about how it affects his own decisions?

“I’m going to sign good policy, OK?” Ducey said.

“I report to the people of Arizona and not a major sports league,” he continued. “And I’m going to make decisions on the policies that are put in front of me.”

The letter from GPL singles out three measures its members find objectionable:

– SB 1485 would remove people from what is now called the “permanent early voting list” if they do not use their early ballots at all in two consecutive primary and general elections. People would remain eligible to vote, but would have to go to the polls.

– SB 1593 prohibiting the counting of any early ballot postmarked later than the Thursday before the election, regardless of whether it actually arrived by Election Day. It also would reduce the number of days someone might have an early ballot by five.

– SB 1713 requiring someone who wants to vote early to include a separate affidavit with a date of birth  or a voter ID number.

“These proposals are a concerted effort from those in Arizona — and across the nation — who wish to sow additional doubts about our elections in the minds of voters, and feed into the paranoia that has plagued our political discourse over the past several months,” the GPL letter reads. “Disturbingly, each of these proposals have one thing in common: making it more difficult for Arizonans to vote.”

SB 1485 and 1713 already have been approved by the Senate and await House floor debate; SB 1593 has yet to be debated in the Senate.

The writers dismiss claims by proponents that these are common-sense measures designed to promote election security and voter confidence.

“Arizonans already have confidence in the integrity of our elections and, by and large, find it easy to vote,” they wrote.

Ducey appeared to agree, noting that he signed the canvass on Nov. 30 formally certifying the election results.

“All 15 of our counties certified the results,” he said. “They were audited. The votes were tabulated and determined to be accurate.”

Still, the governor said, the Senate is “a co-equal branch of government” and is free to pursue whatever changes it wants in election laws.

Ducey sidestepped questions about whether he thinks the measures are bad policy that he would veto. And he suggested that any final decision will be based on what finally survives the legislative process.

“It’s very, very rare … that a bill as presented is the bill that arrives, if it is successful,” the governor said. Ducey said it’s all part of the process where lawmakers provide their input as a measure goes from introduced version to what is finally approved by both chambers.

“And then I do have a role as the executive of whether I would determine it to be good policy,” he said.

Ducey’s belief that he wants to “keep politics out of baseball” apparently does not work both ways.

In 2017 the governor criticized athletes to “take a knee” during the Star-Spangled Banner.

“I think that during the national anthem you should stand up, pay respect and reflect over those that have sacrified for this country,” Ducey said at the time. “I don’t think the anthem is a time for activism.

The comments came as what started as a lone protest by Colin Kaepernick over racial injustice spread to other National Football League players.

The governor did not dispute that there are many Black players — and many individuals of all races — who believe that there is racism in this country. But he said kneeling during the anthem is not the way to draw attention to the issue.

“I think there is a lot of attention on those subjects already,” he said.

 

 

GOP lawmakers defend election bills

ugenti-mesnard
Sens. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, R-Scottsdale, and J.D. Mesnard, R-Chandler, to her right, lash out April 19, at some business leaders and the media, accusing them of misrepresenting what would be the effects of their proposed changes in election laws. (Capitol Media Services photo by Howard Fischer)

Two Republican senators lashed out Monday at businesses and the media, accusing them of mischaracterizing what is in changes they are proposing to state election laws.

Michelle Ugenti-Rita of Scottsdale and J.D. Mesnard of Chandler said their measures simply add necessary layers of security to the election process. They said the terms of both bills and their motives have been distorted in news coverage.

But the pair, at a press conference backed by other GOP legislators, saved their harshest criticism for Greater Phoenix Leadership, an association of CEOs in business, education and philanthropy, some of whose members sent an open letter to legislators saying three bills — including the two both are sponsoring — “seek to disenfranchise voters.”

“They are attempts at voter suppression cloaked as reform — plain and simple,” the letter states.
Ugenti-Rita said it is okay to disagree with her bill or any others that lawmakers “represent in the name of election integrity.”

“But you don’t get to mischaracterize and lie about it,” she said.

She said it’s the process for people to debate the relative merits of legislation and suggest changes.

“But you don’t get to label everybody who may support it as racist,” Ugenti-Rita said. “We’re not going to be intimidated.”

There was no immediate response from GPL.

Monday’s event was more than just an airing of the grievances of the two senators. The pair also are trying to pressure House GOP leadership to put the measures, both of which have cleared the Senate, up for a vote.

Both proposals deal with early voting.

Arizona has some of the simplest laws, with people allowed to be placed on a “permanent early voting list” and be guaranteed to get a ballot in the mail ahead of each election. That ballot can be mailed back or dropped off at a polling site.

Every early ballot is reviewed by county election workers to see if the signature on the outside matches what they have on file.

If there is a discrepancy, a call is made to the voter to determine the ballot’s veracity. Reasons for such variance can range from people getting older to someone having a physical condition.

The result of all this is about 80% of Arizonans now use early ballots.

Mesnard’s proposal, SB1713, would require anyone sending in an early ballot to also provide a date of birth and either a driver’s license number or a county-issued voter ID number. That has raised concerns for people who do not drive, as few people are aware of their ID number.

He did not dispute that there is no evidence of widespread fraud in the process in Arizona. But Mesnard said that’s irrelevant.

“I don’t even have to sit here and debate whether someone found evidence or not,” he said.
“What is undebatable is that people have a lot of concerns about it,” Mesnard said. “That, by itself, is a threat.”

And he specifically rejected that the reason for voter doubt is that President Trump said for months before the 2020 election that early ballots are inherently untrustworthy and insisted that the only way he could lose is if there was fraud.

“At the end of the day, these things began long before President Trump was president,” Mesnard said, though he said it did reach a “pinnacle” during the campaign.

“The response is not just to dismiss them because he claimed there was fraud and we didn’t have some sort of level of evidence that meets somebody’s standard that we’re not going to do anything,” he said. “We’re not going to ignore those problems.”

He produced a poll taken by Data Orbital earlier this month which found that a majority of Arizonans, including half of those who vote early, saying they had at least some concern about their votes being “properly counted,” though the survey does not explain what are those fears.

Ugenti-Rita is pushing SB1485.

It spells out that if someone does not return an early ballot in at least one of four prior elections — meaning a primary and a general election in two successive years — the person is dropped from what would no longer be called the permanent early voting list. They could still sign up again to get early ballots and they could still go directly to the polls on Election Day.

Foes contend this would have a disparate negative impact on minority voters who may be less inclined to vote in every election but still want the option of getting that ballot for the years they are interested in casting an early ballot.

It also means that political independents, who usually do not cast ballots in partisan primaries, have just two chances to comply versus four for partisan voters.

Ugenti-Rita said she is going to make “small, meaningful tweaks” to the measure in an effort to address critics but declined on Monday to provide details.

The issue of what the business community thinks about the bills — or at least the message the proposals send — became more crucial following the decision of Major League Baseball to move the All-Star Game out of Atlanta after the Georgia Legislature enacted several measures that were perceived to be attacks on minority voting.

Arizona has some potential risks in that area, with the state scheduled to host the 2023 Super Bowl, the NCAA Men’s Final Four in 2024 and the Women’s Final Four two years later. As the Georgia situation shows, sports leagues have shown themselves to be averse to political controversy, particularly on issues like race and gender.

There’s also the question of whether businesses might decide to locate elsewhere to avoid being linked to negative publicity about Arizona voting laws. Ugenti-Rita made it clear she didn’t care.

“That’s their choice,” she said. “And I would say, don’t let the door hit you where the good lord split you.”

Judge: Minor leaguers work year-round, MLB violated wage law

Chicago White Sox minor league players put baseballs back in the basket during batting practice at a minor league spring training workout Thursday, March 10, 2022, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge ruled that minor leaguers are year-round employees who work during training time and found Major League Baseball violated Arizona state minimum wage law and is liable for triple damages. 

Chief Magistrate Judge Joseph C. Spero in San Francisco also ruled MLB did not comply with California wage statement requirements, awarding $1,882,650 in penalties. 

Spero unsealed a 181-page ruling Tuesday night in a lawsuit filed eight years ago. He ruled minor leaguers should be paid for travel time to road games in the California League and to practice in Arizona and Florida. 

“These are not students who have enrolled in a vocational school with the understanding that they would perform services, without compensation, as part of the practical training necessary to complete the training and obtain a license,” Spero wrote. 

In rejecting many of MLB’s motions for summary judgments, Spero allowed those claims to proceed to a trial scheduled for June 1. 

He ruled for the players under Arizona state law, leaving only the amount of damages to be determined. 

“For decades, minor league players have worked long hours year-round in exchange for poverty-level wages,” the steering committee of Advocates for Minor Leaguers said in a statement. “Working as a professional baseball player requires far more than just playing baseball games. It also requires hours of year-round training, practice, and preparation, for which we have never been properly compensated. 

“We are thrilled with today’s ruling, which is an enormous step toward holding MLB accountable for its longstanding mistreatment of minor league players.” 

MLB had no immediate comment. 

The suit was filed by first baseman/outfielder Aaron Senne, a 10th-round pick of the Florida Marlins in 2009 who retired in 2013, and two other retired players who had been lower-round selections: Kansas City infielder Michael Liberto and San Francisco pitcher Oliver Odle. 

They claimed violations of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act and state minimum wage and overtime requirements for a workweek they estimated at 50-to-60 hours. 

Congress enacted the Save America’s Pastime Act in March 2018, which amended the FLSA to exempt baseball players from the statute’s minimum wage and overtime requirements. 

Spero has presided over the case for years. 

“The court has previously held that plaintiffs are employees rather than trainees,” he wrote. 

The case was sent back to the District Court by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2019 after lawyers for the players and MLB spent years arguing whether it should receive class-action status. 

Spero ruled that MLB is a joint employer with teams of minor league players; that those players perform “work” during spring training; that travel time on team buses to away games is compensable under FLSA, Florida and Arizona law and that travel time by California League players to away games is compensable under California law. 

Spero also said federal law does not permit a defense under Florida state law claims. He dismissed claims after the new law in March 2018 and also dismissed claims against former baseball Commissioner Bud Selig, who was listed as a defendant in the original suit along with the 30 big league clubs. 

Major League Baseball wants players exempt from minimum wage law

In this March 5, 2018, file photo, Colorado Rockies' DJ LeMahieu bats during a spring baseball game against the Chicago Cubs, in Scottsdale. Major League Baseball is seeking an exemption of baseball players from Arizona’s minimum wage law at the Legislature. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson, File)
In this March 5, 2018, file photo, Colorado Rockies’ DJ LeMahieu bats during a spring baseball game against the Chicago Cubs, in Scottsdale. Major League Baseball is seeking an exemption of baseball players from Arizona’s minimum wage law at the Legislature. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson, File)

As pitchers and catchers prep to report for spring training in February, Major League Baseball is trying to convince Arizona lawmakers to exempt minor league ballplayers from the state’s minimum wage law.

The legislative maneuver mirrors the league’s lobbying effort at the federal level, where in 2018 Congress passed the Save America’s Pastime Act as part of a budget bill. That law exempts baseball players on minor league contracts from the Fair Labor Standards Act, which requires employees to be paid the federal minimum wage and overtime pay.

Garrett Broshuis, a St. Louis-based attorney and former minor league player, said that law doesn’t preempt state law from applying to players while they participate in the Cactus League, Arizona’s spring training system.

Arizona voters overwhelmingly approved a law to gradually increase the state’s minimum wage in 2016. Now $11 per hour, the rate will spike to $12 in 2020.

Baseball players won’t see a penny of that come February and March.

“I think that most baseball fans don’t realize that minor league baseball players are not paid at all when they go to spring training,” Broshuis said. “Each year there are thousands of minor leaguers that report to spring training, and they have to perform a month of work, seven days a week, with no pay at all.”

Broshuis sued the league in U.S District Court in San Francisco in 2014 to challenge minor league contracts, which pay as little as $1,100 per month. Those contracts, and those for major league players, only pay during the regular season.

The law passed by Congress was a setback for Broshuis’s case at the federal level. But he’s also seeking class action status in Arizona and Florida – MLB’s other base for spring training – to challenge the league’s pay structure under state law. A federal judge denied that request, but Broshuis is awaiting a ruling on his appeal.

A bill sponsored by Rep. T.J. Shope, R-Coolidge, attempts to undercut that legal fight or any other complaint that teams are in violation of the state’s minimum wage by not paying minor league baseball players during spring training.

HB 2180 would carve out minor league baseball players in Arizona law by enshrining the exemption in federal law in state statute. If signed into law, the bill also applies retroactively, meaning teams would be free from liability against any prior claims that the law was violated. Broshuis said he’s still assessing the bill’s potential impact on his lawsuit.

Shope said the league is trying to shore up it’s legal defense at the state level.

“I think it’s just trying to clear up what MLB considers a gray area on their flank. … My assumption is they obviously do have a concern, and are trying to protect a flank of theirs more in the pro-active sense,” Shope said.

As for the players, Shope described spring training as “essentially a tryout. You’re not on the team yet.”

But once drafted, MLB teams can control a player’s rights for years. A player who doesn’t make the major league roster will most likely get assigned to a minor league affiliate at the team’s discretion, “and then they have to pay that first month of rent, they have to pay that security deposit wherever they’ve been assigned,” Broshuis said. “And it’s incredibly difficult to do that when you’ve been required to work for a full month without pay at all.”

The Major League Baseball Players Association doesn’t represent minor league players, but union officials said they oppose exempting players in the minors from state law.

“It is fundamentally unjust to deny professional baseball players the basic protection of the minimum wage laws, especially at a time when clubs are reporting record revenues,” said Ian Penny, general counsel for MLBPA.

In a statement provided by an MLB spokesman, league officials said that a carve out for minor league players is just another of “a variety” of exemptions in the state’s minimum wage law.

“This legislation is a very specific exemption for a very specific problem. It is not a broad based change in Arizona’s minimum wage law. It furthers the purpose’ of what voters intended by specifying a group that should be exempt,” league officials stated.

In fact, Arizona’s minimum wage laws only exempts employees who regularly receive tips, babysitters and people employed by a parent or sibling.

And Shope acknowledged it’s questionable if the law furthers the voters intent.

That argument is crucial, since the Arizona Constitution has strict protections for voter-approved laws. If lawmakers want to change those laws, as HB 2180 proposes, it requires a three-fourths majority vote of the Legislature and must further the law’s intent.

Attorneys for Living United for Change, a major backer of the minimum wage initiative, said they don’t think Shope’s bill furthers the purpose of the law.

Shope said whether his bill meets those requirements is “something we’re going to have to talk about.” And the political reality of convincing three-fourths of his colleagues to vote for the bill could spell its doom.

“If there is organized opposition to this, you’re never going to get the three-fourths vote anyway,” Shope said.

Broshuis said a carve out for baseball players can’t be what voters wanted.

“It really is just unfortunate, because the people of Arizona passed this law to require employers to pay all workers a minimum wage, and these ballplayers are performing a service that is a valuable service, and they deserve to be compensated at least the minimum wage for it,” he said.

Supreme Court declines baseball wage case

Arizona Diamondbacks starting pitcher Luke Weaver throws against the Colorado Rockies during the second inning of a baseball game, Saturday, Sept. 26, 2020, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Matt York)
Arizona Diamondbacks starting pitcher Luke Weaver throws against the Colorado Rockies during the second inning of a baseball game, Saturday, Sept. 26, 2020, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Matt York)

The U.S. Supreme Court has given a key victory to players on minor league baseball teams, clearing the way for them to sue to be paid the minimum wage while they’re in spring training in Arizona.

Without comment on Monday the justices refused to disturb an appellate court decision that says the players are entitled to pursue a class-action lawsuit to show that the 15 teams that train here were not obeying minimum wage laws. That specifically includes Arizona law which currently mandates that all employees get at least $12 an hour.

Friday’s ruling comes more than a year after state Rep. T.J. Shope, R-Coolidge, attempted to undermine at least part of the players’ claims by seeking to amend state law to exempt baseball teams, including the Arizona Diamondbacks, from the voter-approved laws that mandate what employees must be paid. That measure also effectively would have let teams work their minor league players as much as they want without having to worry about overtime — or, in some cases, paying them at all.

It died amid legal questions about whether Arizona lawmakers have the power to alter what voters had approved.

Attorney Bob King who represents the players called Monday’s high court decision “great news.”

“After almost four years on appeal, the players can now return to the trial court to ensure that Major League Baseball and team owners comply with minimum and overtime wage laws, a welcome development for minor leaguers in a very unusual year,” he said in a statement.

Garrett Broshuis who represents minor league players, has told Capitol Media Services he did not know how much money is at stake in terms of missed pay for work already done.

“You have players that are required to report to spring training every spring and they have to work for no pay there,” he said. “We believe that is fundamentally unfair and that no worker should be forced to work for free.”

But he said part of the focus now is changing the rules for future players. And Broshuis said that the financial hit to teams with payrolls of more than $100 million a year should not break them.

In a prepared statement, MLB said it does not comment on litigation. But the organization also suggested the lawsuit was unnecessary.

“MLB had long planned to increase minor league player salaries as part of our next agreement with minor league clubs,” the statement says, saying that players will receive salary increases ranging from 38% to 72% for the 2021 season. And the organization said it is focused on efforts to “enhance” the experience for players, including “renovated facilities, reduced travel, and improved daily working conditions.”

Central to the dispute is that most major professional sports in this country have their own farm system to develop talent. For baseball, according to court records, it’s an extensive minor league system with nearly 200 affiliates across the country employing about 6,000 players.

All minor league players are required to sign a seven-year Uniform Player Contract, a contract that spells out that first-year players are paid a fixed salary of $1,100 a month during the regular season.

richard-paez-web
Judge Richard Paez

But beginning in early March, the minor league affiliates conduct spring training in Arizona and Florida. And appellate Judge Richard Paez, a President Clinton nominee, writing for the majority in last year’s ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, said that contract “strongly indicates” that participation is mandatory.

More to the point, virtually all players are not paid during the four-week period, with some players saying that training entails working seven days a week. There also are “instructional leagues” after the regular season, with Paez saying that the contract strongly implies that participation is required.

“And just as with spring training, players are virtually never paid for participation in the instructional league,” he wrote.

In fact, Paez said that of the 21,211 players who participated in spring training between the 2009 and 2015 seasons, only 11 were paid a salary.

That led to the class-action lawsuit against Major League Baseball and all the teams charging them with violating labor laws in Arizona, Florida and California, with more than 2,200 current and former minor league players opting in.

Attorneys for the league and the teams sought to quash the class-action move, arguing among other things that players from teams across the country should not be able to argue that they are entitled to the protections of Arizona’s laws, which have a higher minimum wage than required under federal laws. Paez rejected that contention.

“The laws of Arizona and Florida should apply to the work performed wholly within their respective boundaries,” he wrote.

Paez also said that the heart of the case involves minimum wage violations. That, he said, means that liability can be established simply by showing that the players performed “any compensable work.”

And he specifically noted that, under Arizona law, the failure of an employer to keep appropriate records of hours worked “raises a rebuttable presumption that the employer did not pay the required minimum wage.”

Monday’s Supreme Court ruling clearing the way for the class-action lawsuit does not mean the players ultimately will win.

Paez, in issuing the appellate ruling, said the case will come down to two questions: Are they employees, and do the activities they perform during those times constitute “compensable work.”

“As nearly all players are unpaid during these time periods, if the answer to those two questions are resolved in plaintiffs’ favor, liability may be established by showing that the players performed any work,” he wrote.

Shope’s bill sought to exempt the players from the state minimum wage. On paper, that would have left them subject only to federal law.

But two years ago lobbyists for Major League Baseball pushed a measure through Congress dubbed the “Saving America’s Pastime Act” which exempts teams from all federal wage laws as long as they pay the players at least $290 a week. That’s the equivalent to $7.25 an hour for a 40-hour week — the federal minimum wage — but with a specific exemption from overtime, meaning they can force the players to work as many hours as they want for that $290.

That change was buried on page 1,967 of a $1.3 trillion spending bill signed into law by President Trump.

Shope, the House speaker pro-tem, said he was sponsoring HB 2180 at the behest of lobbyists here for Major League Baseball. He said they told him there are reasons that it makes no sense to try to reduce player pay to an hourly basis.

Supreme Court refuses to hear claims Arpaio conspired with counterfeiter

Former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio speaks Tuesday, May 22, 2018, at the Capitol in Phoenix prior to turning in petition signatures to the Arizona Secretary of State in his bid to appear on the ballot in the race to succeed retiring U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake. The Republican lawman's campaign says it turned in 10,000 signatures on Tuesday so he can compete in the GOP primary on Aug. 28. (AP Photo/Matt York)
Former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio (AP Photo/Matt York)

Former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio may still be going through court battles over racial profiling, but he is off the hook in another case in which a photographer accused him of making a deal with a counterfeiter.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to hear a case alleging Arpaio of not charging a felon in exchange for 3,000 counterfeit posters of a moment captured just before game one of the 2001 World Series.

The photographer, David Kelly, took a picture at the 2001 World Series that shows members of the Phoenix Fire Department on the playing field of Chase Field – then known as Bank One Ballpark – raising a flag from the Sept. 11 World Trade Center attacks, an image Kelly said was later stolen by Raymond Young.

Young, who claimed to be “as an upstanding, former Major League Baseball player who knew a lot of people and had many connections in professional baseball and among sports memorabilia dealers,” convinced Kelly, who worked under the name Big League Photos, to let him be a distributor of the photo.

According to Kelly’s complaint, Young “commenced to orchestrate a colossal scheme of distributing, for financial gain and at the Plaintiff’s expense, massive amounts of the counterfeit Copyrighted Posters to over 100 vendors throughout the country.”

Kelly said in the court documents that the vendors made “millions of dollars” using his property. Kelly sued Young in 2006, and was granted  $1.125 million for Young’s breach of contract, according to the documents.

But Kelly claims that three years before the lawsuit he contacted Arpaio’s office and they refused to investigate Kelly’s claims.

Kelly argues in the documents that “Mr. Young and Defendant Arpaio agreed that Mr. Young would donate 3,000 copies of the counterfeit Copyrighted Posters to the MCSO in exchange for Defendant Arpaio’s continuing to refrain from arresting Mr. Young for his state and federal criminal conduct.”

He defends this claim with a picture of Arpaio and Young holding up a poster of the photo from the World Series game. Kelly also said he had a “chance encounter” with Arpaio in 2013, and Arpaio admitted to selling the 3,000 copies and said he would “make it up to you somehow.”

The courts have ruled against Kelly. In December 2017, District Court Judge G. Murray Snow, the same judge who ordered Arpaio to stop racially profiling, said Kelly’s arguments raised “no genuine issues for trial concerning any of the alleged infringement occurring after December 2012.”

Snow said in the ruling that because Kelly filed in 2015, and the statute of limitations for copyright infringement is three years, all of his claims before December 2012 could not be tried in court.

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Snow’s ruling that Kelly’s claims prior to 2012 were past the statute of limitations for copyright infringement, and his claims after 2012 did not raise substantial issues.