Why is there a collusion case at all with Colin Kaepernick if there is "at will" employment in almost every state?

There is no "collusion" between the NFL owners to not hire Kaepernick, there doesn't need to be. NFL owners are in the business to make money, not lose money. Hiring Kaepernick would bring some people who are followers of him, but it would also bring others who despise him. That conflict is not something that any NFL owner is willing to spend millions of dollars investing into. And although Kaepernick may help a team win some games, he is not an all lights out QB that opposing teams are afraid of. The negatives far outweigh the positives, and NFL owners do not need to contact each other to blackball Kaepernick, the many reasons they don't hire him are obvious without the need for collusion.

There is a collusion case because the league's contract with the NFLPA forbids collusion by the owners to prevent employment. Right to work laws have nothing to with the issue, nor any hiring, anywhere. Whether there was actual collusion will be decided by a judge.

The fundamental principle of a free market economy is competition. Competition is supposed to drive business decisions, so that government regulation is unnecessary. When businesses cooperate with each other about certain aspects of their industry where there should be competition, that's collusion.

Samsung plead guilty to price fixing for memory chips in 2005 and was fine $300 million. Major League Baseball owners have been found guilty several times of colluding to artificially deflate the size of contracts offered to free agents.

If each NFL owner decided on his own not to hire Kaepernick, there's no problem. If there was some sort of agreement between the owners to freeze him out, then it's collusion, and a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

He's a real piece of garbage.