NCAA legal battle continues, could open door for college athletes to form unions

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A legal battle that would open the door for some college athletes to form unions took an expected, yet significant step forward Thursday when the National Labor Relations Board issued a complaint against the NCAA, the Pac-12 and USC for unfair labor practices.

Those three parties will argue against lawyers from the NLRB in a hearing scheduled for Nov. 7. The hearing is the next step in one of several mounting challenges to the NCAA's fundamental belief that college athletes are not employees and thus should not be paid directly for their athletic performance.

If athletes -- this complaint applies only to football, men's basketball and women's basketball players -- are viewed as employees under the National Labor Relations Act, they would have the ability to organize and collectively bargain against schools for a larger share of the billions of dollars of revenue generated by college sports each year as well as other workplace protections.

The NCAA has been firm in its stance that college athletes should not be employees of their schools. The NCAA believes making athletes into employees could lead to a system where athletes could be fired for poor performance and create complications for international athletes as well Title IX compliance.

The complaint against USC, Pac-12 and the NCAA was filed in February 2022 by the National College Players Association, an advocacy group that was involved in pushing states to write the legislation that forced the NCAA to change its policies on players making money from name, image and likeness deals.

NCPA founder Ramogi Huma said Thursday that they believe this process will prove athletes are entitled to all the rights and protections of employees in America.

"FBS football players and NCAA Division I men's and women's basketball players, the majority of whom are Black, are exploited physically and economically by NCAA sports," Huma said in a statement. "One of the reasons this injustice continues to plague all athletes in these sports nationwide is because NCAA sports has denied them rights under labor law."

The decision by Abruzzo's staff to pursue all three groups as joint employers creates the possibility that all college athletes could be granted the right to unionize as a result of this case. The NLRB doesn't have jurisdiction over public universities, so the courts would need to determine that conferences and the NCAA act as an employer in order for their decision to apply to all schools competing in college sports.

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