Noah Feldman, Columnist

Supreme Court Puts NCAA on Notice for Athletes’ Salaries

Though the justices didn’t rule on the issue of compensation, they rejected the “amateurism” argument for denying it.

June 21, 2021 at 4:34 PM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

At the center of antitrust law.
Photographer: Andy Lyons/Getty Images

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In an important 9-0 opinion, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision saying that the NCAA is violating the antitrust laws by denying educational benefits to student athletes. The court didn’t say it’s unlawful for the NCAA to stop member schools from paying athletes outright — but only because that issue wasn’t before the court.

The opinion hints that, in a future decision, the justices could hold that antitrust law requires the NCAA to let colleges pay salaries to athletes. And in a separate concurrence, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said exactly that.