How Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court could affect baseball

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/dailypitch/post/2010/05/how-elena-kagans-nomination-to-the-supreme-court-could-affect-baseball/
May 11, 2010
How Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court could affect baseball
Seth Livingstone

Baseball's 2003 drug-testing program was meant to be an anonymous survey to determine the prevalence of performance-enhancing drug use in the game. But we now know the results were far from anonymous -- federal agents seized the samples before the union destroyed them and in the past 15 months, superstars Alex Rodriguez, Sammy Sosa, David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez were outed as testing positive in the survey.

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan gets ready to take her swings in this 1993 photo provided by University of Chicago Law School.CAPTIONBy AP

Now, the nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court may impact the fate of those samples.

According to the Associated Press:

The nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to become a Supreme Court justice could have an impact on whether the government tries to overturn a decision that federal agents illegally seized drug-testing samples and records of baseball players who allegedly tested positive for steroids in 2003.

The Major League Baseball Players Association won a 9-2 decision last August from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

That long-running Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative case remains before the 9th Circuit, which said in late November it is deciding whether to have the 11-judge panel or the full appellate court rehear the case.

If the 9th circuit doesn't alter the decision, the solicitor general — Kagan or her successor — would decide whether to ask the Supreme Court to review the matter.