The U.S. Supreme Court has denied requests by both parties to review last year’s federal appeals court decision in O’Bannon v. National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), a case involving federal antitrust laws and restrictions on the compensation of intercollegiate athletes.
The justices on Monday rejected the NCAA’s petition for review in the
class-action lawsuit originally filed by Ed O'Bannon, a former UCLA
basketball player, and other athletes alleging that the NCAA and other
groups profited from student-athlete likenesses on television, in video
games and on merchandise while athletes were prohibited from receiving
payment. The Supreme Court also rejected O'Bannon's request for review
of aspects of the decision.
The NCAA maintains that its rules banning compensation for
student-athletes’ likenesses are the same as the prohibition on being
paid to play, and therefore are permissible under the court’s amateurism
precedent set in the 1983 case, NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma.
“While we are disappointed with this decision not to review this
case, we remain pleased that the Ninth Circuit agreed with us that
amateurism is an essential component of college sports and that NCAA
members should not be forced by the courts to provide benefits
untethered to education, including providing any payments beyond the
full cost of attendance,” said Donald Remy, NCAA’s chief legal officer,
in a statement Monday.
The ruling on appeal was issued by the Ninth Circuit in September 2015, which issued a split decision
that a federal district court’s injunction allowing schools to pay
athletes as much as $5,000 a year beyond the full cost of attendance was
“erroneous,” but also that giving student-athletes scholarships up to
the full cost of attendance is permissible. ACE filed an amicus brief on the case in November 2014.
As ACE President Molly Corbett Broad noted
in a statement on the Ninth Circuit’s ruling, student-athletes are
first and foremost students, and transforming them into paid
professionals would harm the quality of their overall educational
experience.
The court’s decision effectively ends legal action in this case,
although it does not mean the end to the overarching issue of
student-athlete compensation. There are several ongoing cases—including Jenkins v. NCAA—that also address the matter, which ACE will continue to monitor.