House Plaintiff Attorneys Argue Objections To Roster Limits, Title IX “Suffer Fatal Defects”

Attorneys for the athletes in the pending settlement in the House v. NCAA case filed a brief on Monday claiming recent arguments raised against some of the settlement terms have no merit.

House plaintiffs’ attorneys Steve Berman and Jeffrey Kessler argue that objections over roster limits, Title IX, and other topics “suffer fatal defects” and “are mostly a rehash” of earlier objections.

Berman and Kessler said that “for many sports, roster limits will allow for larger rosters than average squad sizes,” adding that, outside of the Power 4 conferences, the limits “will only apply to member institutions that opt in to the revenue-sharing model.”

With the final approval hearing for the case scheduled for April 7, Berman and Kessler emphasized that settlement approval hinges on it being fair, reasonable and adequate. Sportico‘s Michael McMann writes that the settlement does not necessarily have to be “ideal or great for all class members.”

“(Judge) Wilken will consider whether the settlement shows overall fairness in the context of the antitrust claims the players raised in the lawsuits,” McMann wrote.

The attorneys believe that the settlement represents “an extraordinary transformation of college sports and opens the markets for athletic services to substantially more competition,” and that even if the settlement leads to negative effects for some class members, they will be “far outweighed by the many other benefits.”

Berman and Kessler also note that the settlement contains mitigation features, including that if an athlete loses a roster spot, their scholarship is protected.

They also reiterated that Judge Claudia Wilken cannot amend the settlement, and remove the roster restrictions, for example, she either approves it or doesn’t.

“(Wilken) simply does not have the power to remove one portion of a class action settlement and approve the rest,” they said, noting that if roster limits weren’t included in the settlement, the terms might not have been agreed to in the first place.

Regarding Title IX complaints, Berman and Kessler responded to the argument that the $2.8 billion in backpay to D1 athletes unfairly benefits male athletes by noting that there is no precedent for a court holding that Title IX applies to the allocation of damages in an antitrust case.

“This is with good reason,” they said in the brief, noting that antitrust law is about economic competition in markets, while Title IX is in place to prohibit sex discrimination.

“The damages in an antitrust case must be allocated and awarded in a manner that would have occurred through market forces in a but-for world where the antitrust violation did not take place.”

Read the full brief here.