Lawyer from Duke that has been on SEC's side says Sankey's federal lawsuit is awful and

will likely get tossed

"The more I work my way through this, the more I think that this complaint is awful and subject to dismissal. The federal jurisdiction is being manufactured as a First Amendment problem. Who is forcing any association with LSU? There is no Ken Paxton letter like we had with the Big 12. A state officer threatening a conference with antitrust liability for exercising its associational rights is a First Amendment injury. I get that. That letter manufactured the controversy and the federal jurisdiction.

But, here, the First Amendment claims make no sense. Compelled association is a shield against government compulsion by force of law, and there is no law here, no order, no threat, nothing directing the SEC to seat anyone. The conference admitted LSU, retains LSU, and holds an express bylaw power to suspend it, expel it, strip its revenue, and declare the athletes ineligible. Nobody is forcing this association. The SEC is choosing it, and choosing it is not an injury a federal court can redress.

The invocation of Section 1983 and Ex parte Young is mind-boggling. Ex parte Young exists to stop state officers from enforcing unconstitutional law. It is not a vehicle for enforcing a private association's bylaws. And the complaint's pleading that "each Defendant is a person within the meaning of Section 1983" is ridiculous. LSU and its Board are arms of the State of Louisiana, and arms of a State are not persons at all under Section 1983. That's been the law for 37 years. Will v. Michigan Dep't of State Police, 491 U.S. 58 (1989). The official-capacity defendants survive that, but a complaint that gets the elementary point wrong as to two of five defendants is not one that inspires confidence in the rest."

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