MLB Lawsuit 2026: Lockout, Wage Settlement, and Antitrust Fights

Major League Baseball enters late 2026 facing a stack of overlapping legal and labor problems, and the MLB lawsuits and disputes active in 2026 range from a looming lockout and a federal probe of the players’ union to a resolved $185 million minor-league wage settlement, renewed challenges to baseball’s antitrust exemption, data privacy class actions, and the broadcast chaos left behind by the Diamond Sports bankruptcy. Here is what each fight is about and where it stands.

The 2026 CBA Expiration and Likely Lockout

The collective bargaining agreement between MLB and the MLB Players Association expires at 11:59 p.m. ET on December 1, 2026. Formal negotiations opened on May 12, 2026, in New York, though those early sessions were presentations rather than hard economic bargaining.¹ Most observers expect owners to lock players out the moment the deal lapses, repeating the tactic used in December 2021.²

The dispute is structural, not incremental. Ownership has formally proposed a hard salary cap of $245.3 million, a hard salary floor of $171.2 million, and a 50/50 revenue split that would centralize all television revenue, including local broadcast money. The union has historically rejected any salary cap and countered with a different framework: a “Competitive Integrity Tax” penalizing clubs that spend below half the Competitive Balance Tax threshold, a proposal to raise that threshold to $300 million, and a near-doubling of the minimum salary to $1.5 million.³ Owners publicly rejected the union’s opening proposal, arguing it would weaken competitive balance by undermining the existing luxury tax and reducing revenue transfers to smaller-market clubs.⁴

The 2026 regular season should finish untouched because the CBA runs through December. The 2027 season is the one at risk. Reporting puts early-to-mid March 2027 as the practical deadline for a deal that preserves a full regular season.²

Federal Investigation and Leadership Change at the MLBPA

The union walked into these negotiations without its executive director. Tony Clark resigned as MLBPA executive director on February 17, 2026, after being asked to step down by the union’s player leadership.⁵ His departure followed a federal investigation out of the Eastern District of New York into union finances. Investigators have focused on “Players Way,” an MLBPA-owned youth baseball venture that reportedly received nearly $10 million since 2019 despite holding few events, with executives and consultants drawing six-figure salaries. Authorities have also examined whether OneTeam Partners, a licensing company co-founded by the MLBPA and NFLPA, was used to benefit union leaders financially.⁶

A separate internal investigation prompted by the federal probe uncovered what the union described as an “inappropriate relationship” between Clark and a relative who had been a union employee since 2023. No criminal charges had been filed as of Clark’s resignation. The union planned to install interim leadership, with no permanent replacement announced at the time.⁵

The $185 Million Minor-League Wage Settlement

The largest resolved lawsuit involving MLB in recent years is Senne v. Office of the Commissioner of Baseball, a class action filed in 2014 by minor leaguers who alleged the league violated the Fair Labor Standards Act and state wage laws by failing to pay minimum wage and overtime for spring training, instructional leagues, and off-season work.⁷ The case turned on the court’s finding that MLB acted as a joint employer alongside individual minor league clubs.

MLB agreed to pay $185 million to end the litigation. Magistrate Judge Joseph C. Spero in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California granted final approval on March 29, 2023.⁸ Roughly 24,000 players were eligible, with average payments estimated at $5,000 to $5,500.⁹ After about $55.5 million in attorneys’ fees, litigation costs, and administrative expenses, approximately $120 million went to players.⁷ MLB transferred funds to claims administrator JND Legal Administration in July 2023, and distribution was completed that August. As part of the deal, MLB also rescinded rules that had barred teams from paying minor leaguers for work performed outside the regular playing season.¹⁰

Why the Fair Ball Act Matters

While Senne was still pending, Congress passed the Save America’s Pastime Act in 2018 as part of an omnibus spending bill. The provision, championed by Rep. Brett Guthrie and lobbied for by MLB, exempted minor league players from federal minimum wage and overtime protections. Critics noted it was inserted into a 2,232-page bill without a committee hearing.¹¹

Senator Dick Durbin introduced the Fair Ball Act in 2024 to repeal that exemption and restore federal wage protections for minor leaguers in the absence of a collective bargaining agreement. The timing matters: the first-ever minor league CBA, reached in March 2023 after players unionized in September 2022, expires after the 2027 season. If no new deal replaces it, the Save America’s Pastime Act becomes the governing framework again.¹¹ As of late 2024, the Fair Ball Act had not received a floor vote.

Challenges to the Antitrust Exemption

Baseball’s antitrust exemption, dating to the Supreme Court’s 1922 decision in Federal Baseball Club v. National League, continues to draw litigation on two fronts.

Minor-League Contraction Settlements

When MLB cut its affiliated minor league system from 160 teams to 120 in 2020, several dropped clubs sued, calling the contraction an illegal group boycott under the Sherman Act. Plaintiffs included the Staten Island Yankees, Tri-City ValleyCats, Salem-Keizer Volcanoes, and Norwich Sea Unicorns.¹² MLB settled all three lawsuits on November 2, 2023, on confidential terms. Plaintiffs’ attorney James Quinn indicated MLB “would have to pay a lot of money” for a settlement to happen.¹³ The settlement was widely read as a move to keep the case away from a Supreme Court that might be willing to revisit the exemption.

The Puerto Rico Case and Supreme Court Denial

In Cangrejeros de Santurce Baseball Club, LLC v. Liga de Béisbol Profesional de Puerto Rico, Inc., the First Circuit ruled in July 2025 that baseball’s federal antitrust exemption extends to Puerto Rico’s top professional league. It was the first time a federal court had applied the exemption beyond MLB and its affiliated minor league system.¹⁴ The plaintiffs petitioned for certiorari on October 3, 2025, asking the Supreme Court to either overrule the exemption or construe it narrowly.¹⁵ The Court denied the petition on March 2, 2026, leaving the exemption and the First Circuit’s expansion intact.¹⁶ The case was remanded to the district court in Puerto Rico to address whether local antitrust law can still apply to a league operating entirely within the territory. The Curt Flood Act of 1998 remains the only legislative modification to the exemption, and it applies solely to the reserve system for major league players.¹⁷

Data Privacy Suits Against MLB Advanced Media

Multiple class actions filed against MLB Advanced Media beginning in 2022 alleged violations of the Video Privacy Protection Act, claiming the company used tracking pixels to share MLB.com and MLB.tv subscriber viewing data with Meta Platforms without consent. The complaints identified transmitted information including names, addresses, Facebook IDs, and detailed viewing histories, allegedly used for targeted advertising.¹⁸

On January 7, 2026, Judge Gregory H. Woods in the Southern District of New York dismissed three of these suits, including Henry v. Major League Baseball Advanced Media LP. The court held that the information transmitted did not qualify as “personally identifiable information” under the VPPA.¹⁹ At least one related case, Golland v. Major League Baseball Advanced Media, filed in August 2024, was also pending in the Southern District of New York.¹⁸

The Digital Ticket Security Class Action

In October 2025, plaintiff James Lanham filed a proposed class action, Lanham v. MLB Advanced Media L.P., in the Southern District of New York. The suit alleges that the MLB Ballpark mobile app lacked basic security measures such as two-factor authentication, letting cybercriminals steal digital tickets from user accounts during the 2025 season. Claims include negligence, breach of implied contract, and unjust enrichment.²⁰ MLB moved to dismiss in January 2026, arguing the plaintiffs had not alleged any malfunction or security breach attributable to the app itself.²¹

Player Publicity Rights and Sports Betting

MLB Players Inc., the licensing arm of the players’ union, sued DraftKings and bet365 in 2024 in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, alleging the platforms used player names, images, and likenesses on social media to drive betting activity without authorization. In March 2025, the court denied the defendants’ motion to dismiss, rejecting the argument that posting betting odds featuring players constituted news reporting.²² The case against DraftKings was later settled on undisclosed terms and dismissed with prejudice.²³ The ruling before the settlement is considered a significant marker for how publicity rights law will interact with sports betting business models.

Diamond Sports Bankruptcy and the Broadcast Overhaul

The collapse of Diamond Sports Group, operator of the Bally Sports regional networks, rewrote MLB’s local television map. Diamond, a Sinclair Broadcast Group subsidiary, took on more than $8 billion in debt to acquire regional sports networks from Disney in 2019 and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in March 2023 in the Southern District of Texas.²⁴

During the proceedings, several teams saw their broadcast arrangements disrupted. The San Diego Padres, Arizona Diamondbacks, and Colorado Rockies had their games taken over by MLB itself after Diamond’s deals fell apart.²⁵ U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez rejected Diamond’s attempts to cut contractual broadcast fees, holding that teams were owed full payment.²⁴

Judge Lopez approved Diamond’s reorganization plan on November 14, 2024, and the company emerged from bankruptcy on January 2, 2025, rebranded as Main Street Sports Group under the FanDuel Sports Network banner. Debt was cut from nearly $9 billion to $200 million, and Sinclair’s equity interest was canceled after a separate settlement contribution of roughly $495 million. The restructured entity kept broadcast rights for six teams: the Atlanta Braves, Los Angeles Angels, Miami Marlins, St. Louis Cardinals, Detroit Tigers, and Tampa Bay Rays, with revised multi-year deals that include direct-to-consumer streaming rights. Seven other teams now produce and distribute their own local broadcasts under MLB’s oversight.²⁶

Broadcast Blackout Restrictions

MLB’s geographic blackout policies remain unsettled legal territory. In Garber v. Office of the Commissioner of Baseball, filed in the Southern District of New York, fans alleged that MLB’s territorial broadcast restrictions violated antitrust law. A federal judge found in 2014 that these restrictions were not covered by baseball’s antitrust exemption and were subject to standard antitrust scrutiny. The case settled in January 2016 before any final ruling. MLB agreed to lower the price of its MLB.tv streaming package and offer single-team purchase options, but the blackout restrictions themselves stayed in place.²⁷ Because no court issued a final ruling on the merits, MLB remains exposed to future antitrust challenges over its blackout policies.

1
The Athletic (NYT). MLB Union Labor Negotiations Begin
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ESPN. MLB Labor Battle CBA Salary Cap Owners Players Union MLBPA FAQ Manfred
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ESPN. MLB Labor CBA MLBPA First Proposals Lockout Salary Cap Floor
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Fox News / Outkick. MLB Owners Already Pushing Back Players First CBA Proposal Work Stoppage Looms
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The Athletic (NYT). MLBPA Tony Clark Resigns
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CBS Sports. MLB Players Association Tony Clark Resigns
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Courthouse News Service. Complex $185 Million Major League Baseball Deal Closes Minor Leaguer Pay Saga
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HR Dive. MLB Settlement Minor League Players FLSA Minimum Wage Overtime Claims
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ESPN. MLB Pays $185M to Settle Minor Leaguers Minimum Wage Lawsuit
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Yahoo Sports. MLB to Pay $185 Million to Settle Minor Leaguers Class Action Lawsuit
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ESPN. Sources: Fair Ball Act Aims Further Protect Minor Leaguers
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Fordham Journal of Corporate and Financial Law. Back to the Bullpen: Minor League Teams Settle With MLB Over Latest Challenge to Baseballs Historic Antitrust Exemption
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UC Law SF Comment. MLB Antitrust Exemption Settlement
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Forbes. Baseballs Antitrust Exemption Again Nears Possible Supreme Court Review
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SCOTUSblog. Cangrejeros de Santurce v. Liga de Béisbol
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Supreme Court of the United States. Docket No. 25-416
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Harvard Law Review. Baseball Antitrust Exemption Analysis
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ClassAction.org. MLB Advanced Media Lawsuit Claims MLB.com Subscribers Data Secretly Shared With Facebook
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Bloomberg Law. MLB Defeats Three Video Privacy Suits Over Meta Info Sharing
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Top Class Actions. MLB Class Action Claims App Failed to Protect Digital Tickets From Being Lost or Stolen
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Bloomberg Law. MLB Co Seeks Exit From Lost Tickets Suit
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Right of Publicity. MLB Players Inc v DraftKings bet365 Memorandum Ruling
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Bloomberg Law. MLB Players Union DraftKings Settle Publicity Rights Lawsuit
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ESPN. Diamond Sports Group Ordered Fully Pay Twins Guardians Diamondbacks Rangers
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ABC10. Bally Sports MLB Team Games Broadcasting
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ESPN. Diamond Sports Group Emerges Bankruptcy
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Wake Forest Law Review. MLB Broadcast Blackout Antitrust Analysis