Ivy League Wins in Court, Maintains Athletic Scholarship Prohibition

A judge in the United States District Court of Connecticut has dismissed a claim challenging the conferences longstanding ban on athletic scholarships

Nov 17, 2018; Boston, MA, USA; Harvard defensive lineman Alex White (38) celebrates a tackle as Harvard offensive lineman Spencer Rolland (72) walks away during the first half at Fenway Park. Mandatory Credit: Winslow Townson-Imagn Images / Winslow Townson-Imagn Images

In recent months, much attention has been given to the House v. NCAA lawsuit, and rightfully so. The case, in the Northern District of California, appears poised to fundamentally change NCAA compensation rules, allowing schools to directly pay their athletes beyond scholarship and educational benefits for the first time. However, a case that has largely flown under the radar, Choh v. Brown University, has proven today that not every antitrust claim levied upon collegiate sports to challenge compensation rules is fruitful.

Choh v. Brown University, which resides in the District Court of Connecticut, lists all Ivy League institutions and the conference office as defendants in an antitrust challenge seeking to overturn the conference’s seventy-year ban on providing athletic scholarships to their athletes. The complaint alleges that the Ivy League Agreement constitutes price fixing and is a naked restraint on trade that violates Section 1 of the Sherman Act at any level of antitrust scrutiny. 

Today, Judge Alvin Thompson has dismissed the case against the Ivy League and its member institutions. The Judge has determined many deficiencies that preclude the case from moving to trial. The most notable is that the plaintiffs could not allege a relevant market nor prove that the Ivy League Agreement caused market-wide impacts. College sports cases are viewed under the rule of reason, and to satisfy this standard, plaintiffs must outline the market that the defendant has constrained by their alleged anticompetitive actions. 

Choh articulates the relevant market as the Ivy League schools holding significant market power as the only options for athletically and academically high-achieving students (AAHA). In the complaint, Choh alleges that the Ivy League “compete[s] in a distinct market for educational services provided to AAHA students and a distinct market for their athletic services.” The court did not find this persuasive. Many other institutions of elite academic rigor exist within the Division I landscape and serve as alternatives to the more restrictive Ivy League schools: Northwestern, Duke, Rice, Michigan, Stanford, UCLA, Georgetown, and more. 

Without market power, there is no restraint on trade. Prospective student-athletes are free to choose other schools that are willing to offer athletic scholarships, indicating that there is no restriction to a free market and no conspiracy against AAHA students. Simply put, the decision to play sports at an Ivy League school is a unique choice athletes can make in sacrifice of other opportunities.

Many valid antitrust claims can be made against the NCAA, the overarching ruler of collegiate athletics; however, claims against unique rules of individual conferences will always be more challenging to protest. Prospective student-athletes are not bound to select schools in any specific conference, and therefore, those rules cannot change the entire market of college athletics. In fact, they only serve to make those conferences weaker.