By Braden Keith on SwimSwam
While most of the recent NCAA anti-trust litigation has been focused on Division I athletics, under the regulatory framework of employment law, are Division II and Division III athletes any different?
This is a question that a new lawsuit will hope to answer, as three current and former NCAA Division III athletes have said that the division’s ban on athletic scholarships is illegal price-fixing.
The trio are seeking class action status for hundreds of thousands of D3 athletes.
The complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, and challenges the D3 bylaw that bars athletic scholarships as a conspiracy to “fix the price of Division III athletic labor at zero.”
Among the three is Chris Jennings, who swam and played lacrosse at the University of Lynchburg from 2019 to 2023. He is joined as a named plaintiff with Connor Printz, who played basketball at Claremont McKenna College from 2020 to 2024, and Jackson Hale, who is currently a senior defensive back on the Pacific Lutheran University football team.
Printz claims that he quit the basketball team in 2023-24 because he faced nearly $80,000 in tuition, room, and board. The suit says that he also earned up to $50,000 in endorsement deals while in school.
Lynchburg agreed to a negotiated resolution with the NCAA earlier this year after they awarded more than $155,000 in improper financial aid during the 2022-23 academic year.
A similar suit in 2013 was dismissed by an Indiana judge in a case Rock v. NCAA. He ruled that the scholarship ban was “presumptively procompetitive as a matter of law.” The unanimous Supreme Court ruling in NCAA v. Alston in 2021, however, opened up the doorway for a full antitrust review of NCAA limits.
Another relevant case is one that was dismissed earlier this year where student-athletes challenged the Ivy League’s ban on athletic scholarships. The court ultimately found that the Ivy League did not have sweeping market control to defend antitrust in a marketplace, because student-athletes had other choices in other conferences.
That will still be a hurdle for D3 athletes, though they are challenging a Division III-wide rule.
The plaintiffs have asked for an injunction barring enforcement of the scholarship ban, plus triple damages under the Clayton Act going back to October 21, 2022.
There are over 200,000 student-athletes who compete in NCAA Division III athletics annually.
The settlement in the landmark House v. NCAA case eliminated scholarship limits at the Division I level and allowed schools to pay student-athletes directly for the first time beyond scholarships.
While athletic scholarships are banned at the D3 level, student-athletes are able to receive non-athletic scholarships, though colloquially not all of those scholarships occur independent of their athletic achievements.
Jennings was a member of the Lynchburg swimming & diving team from 2019 through 2023. As a senior, the team placed 2nd at the ODAC Championship meet, and he was a major contributor. He swam on four relays and finished as high as 3rd individually in the 100 breaststroke in 56.94.
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