Three current and former Division III athletes sued the NCAA on Friday, claiming the ban on athletic scholarships at more than 400 schools is illegal price-fixing and seeking damages for a potential class of hundreds of thousands of athletes.
The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, challenges Division III Bylaw 15.01.3 and accuses the NCAA of an ongoing conspiracy to “fix the price of Division III athletic labor at zero.”
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Who is suing the NCAA?
Jackson Hale, a senior defensive back at Pacific Lutheran University, is the only current athlete among the named plaintiffs. Connor Printz played basketball at Claremont McKenna College from 2020 to 2024, and Chris Jennings swam and played lacrosse at the University of Lynchburg from 2019 to 2023.
Printz quit early in the 2023-24 season while facing nearly $80,000 in tuition, room and board. The complaint argues that with “even just a meaningful partial scholarship,” he “would have continued playing through his senior season.” He also earned up to $50,000 in endorsement deals while in school.
Lynchburg agreed to a negotiated resolution with the NCAA in January after awarding $155,325 in improper financial aid during the 2022-23 academic year. The complaint doesn’t say whether Jennings received any of that aid.
Rock v. NCAA precedent
A federal judge in Indiana dismissed Division III scholarship claims in Rock v. NCAA in 2013, ruling the ban was “presumptively procompetitive as a matter of law.”
The Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling in NCAA v. Alston eight years later opened the association’s compensation limits to full antitrust review. The new complaint leans on Alston to argue the ban is an agreement among competing conferences, and the case sits in the 9th Circuit, which handled the appeals in both O’Bannon v. NCAA and Alston.
The plaintiffs still must define a relevant market, the issue that sank the Ivy League scholarship case when the 2nd Circuit affirmed its dismissal in April. That case challenged one conference’s policy, while the Division III ban is an NCAA-wide rule binding more than 400 schools.
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How much could the NCAA owe?
The plaintiffs want an injunction barring enforcement of the ban and treble damages under the Clayton Act for athletes who have competed since Oct. 21, 2022. Division III had 210,878 athletes in NCAA championship sports in 2024-25, so a certified class could expose the NCAA to billions of dollars.
Virginia attorney Michael Goldberg, co-lead counsel in Ray v. NCAA, leads the plaintiffs’ legal team.
The filing comes eight days after the NCAA sued Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine over his executive order allowing Ohio schools to grant a fifth year of eligibility to 2022 high school graduates.
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