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Plaintiffs in the NCAA licensing class action lawsuit have achieved yet another victory, after their request for clarification regarding when student-athletes would be able to begin receiving additional deferred benefits was agreed to by a federal judge.
U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken agreed with the plaintiffs who alleged that all student-athletes in college football and basketball should be able to receive money based on the use of their likenesses beginning on Aug. 1, 2015. However, this flew in the face of the NCAA’s defense team requests that only incoming freshmen who signed after that date would receive benefits in the form of a trust fund that would collect up to $5,000 to be disbursed to players following graduation.
To make her point more clear, Wilken noted, “The injunction does not affect the application of NCAA rules to current and prospective student-athletes until August 1, 2015, the start of the next FBS football and Division I basketball recruiting cycle, at which point the injunction will take effect with respect to [the] benefits offered … to prospective and current student-athletes for the 2016-2017 season and beyond.”
This is just the latest status update in the long-running battle led by former NCAA basketball player Ed O’Bannon who argued that the collegiate association was acting illegally in denying student athletes at least a portion of the revenue that their play helped to create for universities and the NCAA as a whole.
Even with that, the landscape of college athletics remains in constant flux. Other NCAA class action lawsuits that have been filed allege that colleges are unable to pay their student-athletes complete tuition, room and board as well as fees, leaving many of them to have to pursue loans or other ways of making it through the year. Others seek to have all compensation caps lifted, arguing that the free market should allow schools that make money to be able to pay players based on their performance and not on the arbitrary definition reportedly used by the NCAA.
Electronics Arts had previously reached a $40 million class action settlement regarding its use of players’ images in popular video games similar to the successful Madden franchise.
The plaintiffs are represented by class action lawyers from Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP, Paynter Law Firm PLLC, The Lanier Law Firm, and other practices.
The NCAA Student Athlete Licensing Class Action Lawsuit is Ed O’Bannon Jr., et al. v. National Collegiate Athletic Association, et al., Case No. 09-cv-03329, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
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