SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — In another victory for college athletes, a Ninth Circuit panel ruled Monday that the National Collegiate Athletic Association cannot restrict their education-related benefits.
The ruling aligns with one issued in March 2019 by Senior U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken in a class action led by former West Virginia running back Shawne Alston.
Alston represented thousands of current and former Bowl Subdivision football and men’s and women’s Division I basketball players claiming their scholarships did not cover their expenses.
In her ruling, Wilken — a Bill Clinton appointee — found the rules violated antitrust laws by restraining trade in the market for a college education combined with the market for the players’ athletic services.
Wilken issued an injunction that barred the NCAA from limiting student athletes’ compensation for anything that would contribute to their studies, such as computers, postgraduate scholarships, tutoring, study abroad expenses, or paid internships. But she stopped short of allowing compensation not related to education.
Wilken said the 11 conferences that play within the NCAA will be allowed to offer non-cash, education-related benefits as well as academic awards on top of grant-in-aid as they see fit, though the NCAA would be able to regulate how schools provide them.
On Monday, Chief U.S. Circuit Judge Sidney Thomas, joined by U.S. Circuit Judges Ronald M. Gould and Judge Milan D. Smith, wrote that Wilken had correctly found the NCAA’s limits on education-related compensation “do not play by the Sherman [Antitrust] Act’s rules.”
“In our view, the district court struck the right balance in crafting a remedy that both prevents anticompetitive harm to student-athletes while serving the pro-competitive purpose of preserving the popularity of college sports,” Thomas, also a Clinton appointee along with Gould, wrote for the unanimous panel.
The panel found Wilken properly applied the three-part “Rule of Reason” under which courts evaluate a restraint’s effect on competition. They found the NCAA’s rules had significant anticompetitive effects on the market for student-athletes’ labor and that only some of rules have pro-competitive benefits by preserving amateurism and keeping a distinction between college and professional sports that should satisfy fans. Finally, the panel upheld Wilken’s less-restrictive alternative to the NCAA’s benefits cap.
"The district court reasonably concluded that uncapping certain education-related benefits would preserve consumer demand for college athletics just as well as the challenged rules do,” Thomas wrote, noting “market competition in connection with education-related benefits will only reinforce consumers’ perception of student-athletes as students, thereby preserving demand.”
In a statement, Alston’s attorney Steve Berman saluted the panel’s finding.
"We are incredibly pleased that the appeals court has sided with the lower federal court’s previous decision and with our plaintiffs, the student-athletes who have worked so hard under the NCAA’s regulations to balance their needs with the intense demands of college sports,” Berman said. “We know that the court’s ruling in this case will have a lasting positive impact for college-athletes and look forward to seeing them reap the rewards of this injunction.”





