In re NCAA Athletic Grant-in-Aid Cap Antitrust Litigation
United States District Court for the Northern District of California
2018 WL 1524005 (2018)
The NCAA regulated what payments and benefits student-athletes could receive for their athletic services. Several student-athletes sued, claiming the regulations amounted to unlawful price fixing and were far stricter than necessary to achieve the NCAA's legitimate, pro-competitive goals. They proposed two less restrictive alternatives — letting individual conferences, rather than the NCAA, set benefit rules, or enjoining national limits on benefits tied to education or incidental to athletic participation — and offered evidence that the NCAA already granted conferences autonomy on other issues and already allowed some of these benefits. The NCAA moved for summary judgment.
Whether a court may consider alternatives to the current collegiate-athlete benefits structure if it can be shown that the alternatives can achieve the legitimate objectives of the benefits structure in a substantially less restrictive manner.