US Supreme Court sides with former athletes in dispute with NCAA

The court ruled that the NCAA’s curbs on non-cash payments to college athletes are anticompetitive under a federal law.

Siding with student-athletes, the US Supreme Court on Monday ruled against the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the organisation’s bid to maintain limits on education-related compensation for them that critics have said help maintain the fiction of amateurism in college sports. The court ruled 9-0 that the NCAA’s curbs on non-cash payments to college athletes related to education – including benefits such as computers, science equipment and musical instruments – are anticompetitive under a federal law called the Sherman Antitrust Act. The NCAA is the major governing body for US intercollegiate sports. The San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals last year found the NCAA’s rules to be anticompetitive, upholding a 2019 injunction imposed by California-based US District Judge Claudia Wilken that allowed education-related compensation.