Raiders logo. Photo: Jonathan Weiss/Shutterstock.com

A federal judge has knocked out an antitrust lawsuit brought by the city of Oakland against the Raiders and the National Football League over the club's move to Las Vegas, finding that the city hadn't sufficiently alleged that it suffered an antitrust injury.

U.S. Chief Magistrate Judge Joseph Spero of the Northern District of California on Thursday held that the city hadn't plausibly alleged that it would have retained the Raiders or attracted another team to the city without the league's 32-team cap on franchises. Spero found that the city hadn't addressed questions of how the league actually should be structured and whether the city could have retained the Raiders or attracted another team to the market without the restrictions.

"Reading Oakland's complaint and arguments as a whole—in particular, the lack of any suggestion as to how the NFL should be structured, and the request for equitable relief only as to the decision to permit a relocation rather than the limitation on the number of teams—it does not appear that Oakland actually objects to the limited number of teams in the NFL," the judge wrote. "Instead, it would seem that Oakland simply wishes it could have kept one of those teams for itself, and benefited from the prestige and economic windfall that derive from that scarcity, without paying the supracompetitive price that also arises from it," he wrote.

The judge wrote that he declined to be the first to endorse Oakland's "unorthodox theory of antitrust injury."

Oakland originally sued the Raiders, the NFL and its other 31 franchises in late 2018, claiming they violated the federal antitrust laws by conspiring to "boycott" the city and breached the league's relocation policies by signing off on the team's move to Las Vegas. The city claimed the $378 million "relocation fee" that the team paid acted as "supra-competitive cartel payments" to the 31 other owners. But in earlier dismissing the initial complaint in the case, Spero held that the relocation fee was actually a disincentive for the team to move.

In granting the team and the league's motion to dismiss the case with prejudice Thursday, Spero doubled down on that finding.

"Whatever harm may result from allowing teams to relocate to the city with the highest bid is not harm redressable under the antitrust laws," he wrote. The judge, however, dismissed the team's state law claims for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, giving the city the opportunity to refile those claims in state court.

The city's lawyers, James Quinn of Berg & Androphy and Bruce Simon of Pearson, Simon & Warshaw, didn't immediately respond to a message seeking comment Thursday.

Daniel Asimow of Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer, who represents the team, likewise did not respond to a message Thursday.