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NEW YORK (CBS/AP) ― Baseball bat manufacturers and school baseball sponsors teamed up Monday to ask a judge to toss out a law banning metal bats in the city's high school games as unconstitutional.

The lawsuit against New York City was filed in U.S. District \Court in Manhattan just days after the City Council overrode a mayoral veto to let the law be enforced beginning in September.

The lawsuit was filed by USA Baseball, a Raleigh, N.C.-based national governing body for several baseball associations, and The National High School Baseball Coaches Association, based in Tempe, Ariz., along with four sporting goods companies and several fathers of ballplayers.

Jerald Horowitz, senior counsel with the city law office, said: "We are awaiting the formal legal papers, and will evaluate them thoroughly."

Councilman James Oddo, who sponsored legislation resulting in the law, said the lawsuit will help his cause.

"I welcome it, frankly," he said. "It will continue to bring a spotlight to this issue. It will actually add to the momentum to
make youth baseball a better, pure and safer game." Oddo said today's metal bats are more advanced than aluminum bats used in the 1970s, meaning they hit baseballs farther and faster -- so fast that youths "don't have enough time to get their gloves up to protect themselves from the ball."

But an American Legion Baseball study in 2005 found no substantial scientific proof that wooden bats are safer than metal bats.

Similar bans are under discussion in other areas including New Jersey, where a 12-year-old boy went into cardiac arrest after he was struck in the chest by a ball.

Oddo said the New York City Council was the first legislative body to have banned metal bats. He said athletic associations in North Dakota, Long Island, Staten Island and six counties in New Jersey have done so as well.

He said public schools in Chicago were studying the issue.

The lawsuit says New York City's law would harm high school players, coaches, schools and bat manufacturers because it would increase costs for players and teams and would make high school baseball less enjoyable and less competitive.

The lawsuit maintains the law is an unlawful exercise of legislative power, violating the Commerce Clause of the Constitution by isolating New York City players and teams from those of other states who can use metal bats.

The law also violates the due process requirements of the Constitution because it bears no rational relationship to a legitimate governmental purpose and is arbitrary and invalid, the lawsuit said. It also claimed the law violates the Civil Rights Act and discriminates against the use of metal and nonwood composite bats without any rational basis.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg vetoed the bat ban last month, saying it was an issue for those who run youth leagues, not the government. The City Council then overwhelmingly overrode the veto.

Former New York Mets relief pitcher John Franco testified in support of the ban at a council hearing, while New York Yankees pitcher Mike Mussina said there was no evidence that metal bats were dangerous.

Among the plaintiffs in the lawsuit were several bat manufacturers identified as Easton Sports Inc.; Wilson Sporting Goods Co.; Rawlings Sporting Goods Co. and Hillerich & Bradsby Co.

(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)