Florida, New York and the District of Columbia have joined a lawsuit first brought by other states that challenged a National Collegiate Athletic Association rule barring third-party marketing deals for prospective student athletes.
The states, teaming with the original plaintiffs Tennessee and Virginia, filed an amended lawsuit on Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee.
They accused the collegiate athletic governing body of violating U.S. antitrust law by prohibiting students who are still in the midst of recruitment from negotiating deals with third parties such as alumni and business collectives for the commercial use of their name, image and likeness (NIL).
U.S. District Judge Clifton Corker in Greeneville in February preliminarily blocked the NCAA from enforcing the rule, finding that the lawsuit was likely to succeed.
The NCAA did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday. The group has said member schools support the recruitment rule and has warned that the states' lawsuit would make it harder to protect student athletes from financial exploitation.
The organization is also fighting several other lawsuits over its restrictions on students monetizing their college sports careers.
In a statement, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody said she was suing “to reverse the unlawful restrictions” that the NCAA placed on her state’s universities and athletes.
“It appears no one could ever comply with these ever-changing and unfair regulations that limit the ability of student athletes to negotiate in good faith,” Moody said.
New York Attorney General Letitia James in a statement said New York student athletes "are some of the best in the country, and they should be able to make decisions about their athletic career without restrictions."
D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb called the NCAA rule "anticompetitive and illegal."
The lawsuit over the NCAA’s alleged “recruitment ban” was first filed in January, claiming the organization was unlawfully restraining competition for student-athlete labor in Division I, the highest level for college athletics.
Corker said in his February decision that “encouraging free and fair price competition in the NIL market by enjoining the NCAA's NIL-recruiting ban will serve the public interest.”
The case is State of Tennessee and Commonwealth of Virginia v. National Collegiate Athletic Association, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Tennessee, No. 3:24-CV-00033-DCLC-DCP.
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