conspiring with other defendants to prevent the move. The circuit's chief judge, Alex Kozinski, wrote for a panel that unanimously held for MLB. He rejected the city's argument that the antitrust exemption was limited to the reserve clause by pointing out that the circuit had held otherwise in deciding the Portland Beavers case shortly before Flood, which had turned on franchise relocation, the same issue at hand in the instant case. Further, the CFA had specifically exempted franchise relocation. " Floods clear implication" Kozinski wrote, "is that the scope of the baseball exemption is coextensive with the degree of congressional acquiescence, and the case for congressional acquiescence with respect to franchise relocation is in fact far stronger than it was for the reserve clause at issue in Flood itself." In 2017, hearing the appeal of Right Field Rooftops, the Seventh Circuit considered its Finley precedent and held that the sale of seats at locations outside the ballpark was within the antitrust exemption as well. "This exemption protects the general 'business of baseball' from antitrust laws, and the public display of baseball games is integral to that business", wrote Judge William J. Bauer. "By attempting to set a minimum ticket price, purchasing rooftops, threatening to block rooftops with signage that did not sell to the Cubs, and beginning construction at Wrigley Field, the Cubs' conduct is part and parcel of the 'business of providing public baseball games for profit' that Federal Baseball and its progeny exempted from antitrust law." Limited to reserve clause In Piazza, Judge Padova found Finleys reading of Flood and the cases leading to it incorrect. The more expansive reading sought by MLB to bar suit in the instant case, he allowed, might have been correct prior to Flood. But since that case had conceded that the factual basis for the exemption was no longer consistent with the Court's broadened reading of the Commerce Clause, Padova saw Federal Baseball and Toolsons continuing value as precedent to rest solely on those aspects covered by stare decisis in Flood. For Padova, the "gravamen" of Federal Baseball, as shown in the D.C. Circuit's decision affirmed in that case, was MLB's use of the reserve clause to hamper the FL's efforts to sign players. The Flood Court, he noted, had more than once referred to the clause as the specific issue in Toolson as well, and saw its instant case as similarly