Sotomayor Made Significant Sports Rulings
Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has been involved in some significant sports rulings as a judge, issuing rulings that ended the baseball strike in 1995 and reaffirmed the NFL's policy that a player must be three years removed from high school to be eligible for the draft. The nearly eight-month baseball strike of 1994 and '95 was the longest and most costly work stoppage in professional sports history, producing the cancellation of the World Series in '94 and leading most of the franchise owners to open spring training in '95 with teams of replacement players on the field. Sotomayor in effect ended the strike with a ruling that restored the previous working conditions for the players. That led the players to end their strike, minus a new labor agreement that was not completed until later, after 232 days. In 2004, Sotomayor was part of a three-member panel of appeals
