NCAA wants Supreme Court to take benefits case
The NCAA on Monday said it will ask the Supreme Court to take up a case in which a district judge and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals have ruled that the NCAA cannot have associationwide limits on education-related benefits that college athletes can receive.
The NCAA, along with its 11 majorconference co-defendants, made the disclosure in a filing that asks the 9th Circuit to stay an injunction issued in March 2019 by U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken. Wilken’s injunction is set to take effect soon after the 9th Circuit formally mandates that it go forward, a step that is scheduled Wednesday.
While Monday’s filing is not the NCAA’s formal petition to the high court — that will not be due until Oct. 15 — it provides the contours of the association’s arguments for why the justices should hear the case and overturn the decisions made so far. The NCAA contends that the 9th Circuit’s decision conflicts with decisions of the Supreme Court and other federal appellate courts and deals with “an important question of law.”
The case was brought on behalf of plaintiffs led by former West Virginia football player Shawne Alston. Among the items Wilken said those athletes may receive were scholarships to complete undergraduate or graduate degrees at any school. The judge also appeared to open the possibility of athletes being able to receive cash or cashequivalent awards based on academics or graduation, albeit under some constraints.
However, the appellate panel of Sidney R. Thomas, Ronald M. Gould and Milan D. Smith Jr. declined to broaden the ruling, as the plaintiffs had requested, leaving intact the NCAA’s limits on compensation not connected to education.
The NCAA maintains that if the 9th Circuit’s ruling stands, “The NCAA and its member schools and conferences will no longer have the flexibility to adopt what in their judgment are appropriate and nationally uniform eligibility rules to preserve the traditional amateur character of college sports.
“Instead, they … face an unending string of litigation that will not only transfer substantial control over intercollegiate athletics away from those with experience and expertise in the field, but also reduce the funds available to provide opportunities and services to student-athletes.”
The NCAA already is facing a new antitrust case concerning benefits for athletes.
With regard to conflicts with prior Supreme Court rulings, the NCAA mainly points to the high court’s decision in NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma, a case relating to control of football television rights that the high court decided in 1984.
The NCAA lost that case, but – as it has in many other legal filings over the years – pointed Monday to language from that ruling that says “NCAA rules that prohibit student-athletes from being eligible if they are paid to play are essential if (the NCAA’s) ‘product’—an amateur intercollegiate sports league— is to be available at all.”
Wilken and the 9th Circuit have viewed that language as a type of legal commentary that does not constitute binding precedent.
As for conflicts with rulings of other federal appeals courts, the NCAA maintains that other courts have dismissed antitrust challenges to the association’s limits on athlete compensation without undertaking the detailed level of analysis in which the 9th Circuit and Wilken engaged in this case.
The NCAA argues that “the decision here entrenches that division” in legal approach, so there is reason for the Supreme Court to step in.
The NCAA also maintains that the case merits the Supreme Court’s attention because “intercollegiate athletics as overseen by the NCAA is a major feature of American life. … And each year, millions of fellow students, alumni, faculty, and other fans watch NCAA competitions, including March Madness and football bowl games, either in person or through regional and national broadcasts. For decades, a hallmark of these competitions has been what
called ‘a revered tradition of amateurism,’ one that ‘adds richness and diversity to intercollegiate athletics.’ “
The NCAA maintains that decision in
requires that it be given “ample latitude” to maintain the tradition of amateurism and “this latitude includes leeway for (the NCAA) to decide what rules preserve and promote amateurism, while accounting for the ever-evolving circumstances in which schools and student-athletes participate in intercollegiate athletics.”