August 11, 2020 – Today, Justice Elena Kagan of the United States Supreme Court rejected the NCAA’s bid for a temporary stay of a district court order prohibiting the NCAA from limiting compensation for education-related expenses for Division I football and basketball student-athletes. The NCAA must now comply with the district court’s injunction, which prohibits the organization from enforcing any rules that fix or limit compensation provided to college-athletes by schools or conferences in consideration for their athletic services other than cash compensation untethered to education-related expenses.
Justice Kagan’s decision follows the ruling of the Ninth Circuit in May 2020, which affirmed Northern District of California Judge Claudia Wilken’s determination following a bench trial that NCAA limits on education-related benefits were unreasonable restraints of trade under antitrust law and that enjoining those limits was warranted.
Pritzker Levine acts as Additional Class Counsel in the district court case, In re NCAA Athletic Grant-in-Aid Cap Antitrust Litigation, No. 4:14-md-02541, and as counsel for Justine Hartman and Afure Jemerigbe, two former University of California at Berkeley women’s basketball players who served as class representatives in the case.
In late 2017, District Court Judge Claudia Wilken also granted final approval of a $228 million settlement on behalf tens of thousands of NCAA Division 1 college football, men’s basketball, and women’s basketball athletes impacted by a prior NCAA cap on grant-in-aid scholarships.
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