Should A Music Manager Also Be An Agent? Lawsuit To Decide Reinstated
Artist managers, who have been challenging California laws which preventing them from booking the artists they represent, will now get their day in court.
The Ninth Circuit U. S. Court of Appeals has vacated a March 2013 decision by U. S. District Court Judge Dean D. Pregerson, which had previously dismissed the lawsuit brought by the National Conference of Personal Managers, challenging the constitutionality of the California Talent Agencies Act (TAA).
The Ninth Circuit stated "The district court found that the Governor and Attorney General likely had sovereign immunity, NCOPM likely had standing, and the Labor Commissioner was likely the appropriate party to sue for her non-adjudicatory acts. However, the district court had 'declin[ed] to resolve those issues fully.'"
The Ninth Circuit's decision will return the case to the lower court in order to "to determine the jurisdiction and standing issues" and "make definite findings."
The NCOPM lawsuit claims the TAA and the Labor Commissioner's enforcement violates due process and equal protection rights, burdens and interferes with interstate commerce, impairs the obligations of personal management contracts, burdens and restricts commercial speech and results in involuntary servitude without claims of fraud, non-performance or criminal conduct.
"Personal managers are now one step closer to ending decades of tyranny imposed by the California Labor Commissioner under the guise of an unconstitutional statute," said NCOPM National President Clinton Ford Billups Jr. – via Celebrity Access
