Court Grants Stay in O'Bannon Case

Source: New York Times

A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Friday granted a stay of a federal judge’s ruling last year in the so-called O’Bannon case, which found that N.C.A.A. rules preventing athletes from making money off college sports broadcasts and video games violated antitrust law.

The stay is at least a temporary reprieve for the N.C.A.A. and its decades-old rules barring payments to athletes. Without it, the association would have faced a new reality on Saturday in which colleges theoretically could have offered recruits unregulated money, or the association could have set an unprecedented cap on such compensation.

...The sides argued the case in March in front of the Ninth Circuit, with the N.C.A.A. contending a ruling for the players would professionalize its amateur athletes and hurt its business model. The association requested the stay earlier this month. Whether granting the N.C.A.A. a temporary reprieve portends a decision in its favor is unclear.

...Both Hausfeld and the N.C.A.A. president, Mark Emmert, have said they plan to appeal O’Bannon’s case to the Supreme Court, if necessary. Friday’s stay did nothing to alter that trajectory, said Matthew Mitten, Director of the National Sports Law Institute.

“It’s such an important issue, I think it’s eventually headed to the Supreme Court,” he said.


Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/01/sports/court-grants-stay-in-obannon-case.html?_r=0