JUST IN: Supreme Court Rules 9-0 Against NCAA Limiting Educational Benefits to Student Athletes
The Supreme Court has unanimously ruled that the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) can no longer restrict colleges from providing education-related benefits to athletes — in a decision which could lead to fundamental changes in how college sports operates.
In the case of NCAA v. Alston, the Supreme Court reached a 9-0 decision to invalidate the NCAA’s “amateurism” rules for students playing for university sports teams. The rules stipulated that the NCAA could limit the compensation schools provided to student athletes when it comes to providing perks like computers or funding to pursue graduates degrees.
“This doesn’t go to the simple question of can athletes be paid…It’s about whether there can be limits on educational benefits to them,” Fox News’ Shannon Bream explained as she reported on the case. “That’s a step in the right direction for these athletes pursuing the ability to gain more compensation for what they do for the university.”
Justice Neil Gorsuch delivered the opinion of the court by saying “The extent [the NCAA] means to propose a sort of judicially ordained immunity from the terms of the Sherman Act for its restraints of trade—that we should overlook its restrictions because they happen to fall at the intersection of higher education, sports, and money — we cannot agree.”
Justice Brett Kavanuagh wrote a concurring opinion stating that “the NCAA and its member colleges maintain important traditions that have become part of the fabric of America…But those traditions alone cannot justify the NCAA’s decision to build a massive money-raising enterprise on the backs of student athletes who are not fairly compensated.”
“Nowhere else in America can businesses get away with agreeing not to pay their workers a fair market rate on the theory that their product is defined by not paying their workers a fair market rate,” Kavanaugh goes on. “The NCAA is not above the law.”
From Kavanaugh’s opinion:
The bottom line is that the NCAA and its member colleges are suppressing the pay of student athletes who collectively generate billions of dollars in revenues for colleges every year. Those enormous sums of money flow to seemingly everyone except the student athletes. College presidents, athletic directors, coaches, conference commissioners, and NCAA executives take in six and seven figure salaries. Colleges build lavish new facilities. But the student athletes who generate the revenues, many of whom are African American and from lower-income backgrounds, end up with little or nothing.
