The NCAA added a new legal challenge to its already cumbersome case load Thursday, as a trio of college athletes filed suit against the association and its five most powerful conferences claiming that rules that prohibit schools from paying their athletes violate antitrust law.
Duke football player Dewayne Carter, Stanford soccer player Nya Harrison and TCU basketball player Sedona Prince filed their 70-page complaint in the Northern District of California federal court, the same venue where the NCAA has lost a series of antitrust claims in the past decade. Their attorneys requested an injunction that would prevent the NCAA from enforcing rules that prohibit “pay for play” compensation for athletes and seeks damages for past payments the athletes would have received if the current rules were not in place.
“”It’s time for the NCAA to recognize that the rules prohibiting athletes from sharing in the massive revenues we help to generate are harming all college athletes,” Carter said in a statement provided by his lawyers. “There are hundreds of people involved in NCAA sports but the only ones who cannot be paid are the athletes; I’m proud to stand up for all college athletes to correct that injustice.”
The three athletes are represented by Jeffrey Kessler and Steve Berman, who successfully sued the NCAA to remove any restrictions on academic-related payments in the Alston case that was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2021.