Option 4: you're a member of a voluntary organization, and your state can't change our bylaws.
Which is what's probably gonna happen.
Which is what's probably gonna happen.
From the official digest of the bill at https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm... :
The bill also would prohibit an athletic association, conference, or other group or organization with authority over intercollegiate athletics from preventing a postsecondary educational institution other than a community college from participating in intercollegiate athletics as a result of the compensation of a student athlete for the use of the student’s name, image, or likeness.
AFAICT this law would make the current NCAA bylaws illegal in California. Any California player who accepted an endorsement and was subsequently prevented from playing would be able to sue.
The 4th option that they're suggesting only serves to open them up to lawsuits should they ever try to enforce the rule for CA players.
From Miller vs. NCAA, P 28:
'Under Brown-Forman, 476 U.S. at 579, 106 S.Ct. at 2084, when a state law directly regulates interstate commerce, it can generally be struck down without further inquiry. The Statute directly regulates interstate commerce and runs afoul of the Commerce Clause both because it regulates a product in interstate commerce beyond Nevada's state boundaries, and because it puts the NCAA, and whatever other national collegiate athletic associations may exist, in jeopardy of being subjected to inconsistent legislation arising from the injection of Nevada's regulatory scheme into the jurisdiction of other states. Because the Statute violates the Commerce Clause per se, we need not balance the burden on interstate commerce against the local benefit derived from the Statute.'
Replace Nevada with California and you've got the same issue. A state is not allowed to unilaterally make special statutory carve-out demands on a national organization.
They can say "hey universities, your student-athletes must be allowed to profit from their own likenesses." Totally within the state's power.
They can't say "hey, NCAA, screw your rules, we decided to make up our own for you and you have to deal with it."
https://openjurist.org/10/f3d/633/national-collegiate-athlet...
> By its terms, it regulates only interstate organizations, i.e., national collegiate athletic associations which have member institutions in 40 or more states.
Nevada made the mistake of specifically targeting interstate associations. California does not, so based on the reasoning in that decision the California law does not violate the Commerce Clause per se as the Nevada law did.
The NCAA engages in interstate commerce. California's bill requires that any organization that does business in California allow players in California to be paid. It is requiring the NCAA to provide a carve-out for California.
This is the exact same scenario, legally.
And given that the only choice is to remove the largest state from you organization. With that cali makes their own league and now the NCAA has a huge competition for the top talent. Why would you go to school anywhere else than Cali.
Sure, they can (well, that is, litigate against a state to neutralize the law), usually by claiming it violates federal law (including the Constitution). That's tough here, but I suppose you could throw a hail mary at either a contracts clause or a dormant commerce clause action.
If a college/university contracts to be included in a athletics association, there is nothing wrong with requiring the schools to comply with NCAA rules/regulations.
If a student athlete contracts with a college/university to play a sport for them, there is nothing wrong with the college/university requiring them to comply with both the college and NCAA rules/regulations.
Without the benefit of looking at all the various agreements and the actual CA Bill, it sounds like their approach to cure the issue may amount to an unconstitutional restriction on the athletes' Constitutional right to contract.
They can simply say "your student-athlete is ineligible to participate."
Can California create their own league?
Sure.
Will doing so decimate their schools' athletic budgets? Probably. There's not going to be much national demand for a state-only organization, and it's going to get particularly ugly when the feds discover schools colluding with rich boosters talent in order to attract them there because of Title IX.
Uh, this would be true of many states but not of states like CA/TX/FL.
There would absolutely be demand for a CA-only athletic organization.
There's a reason California did this and not, say, Alaska (no offense to Alaska of course).
One of the foundational reasons that the WWF / WWE became the dominant power in the wrestling market is that they were the first to ignore regional barriers.
Rinse, repeat.
Er, we're talking about them right now. College sports are extremely regional but still have significant national appeal. Many, many people tune into SEC conference games who have no connection to the SEC.
If you think people wouldn't watch an SEC-only league (I'm using the SEC here because it's the most obvious example), then I think that betrays your knowledge of college sports.
[0] admittedly, minor confused conferences like Conference USA and Big 12 stretch the definition a little bit, but they're still essentially regional.
A state-only organization the size of California can easily compete especially when any player in any sport with financial planning would move to California.
Why would anyone watch the NCAA in football, basketball or anything else when we'd know all the best player are in the California League.
Also, the point is that rich boosters colluding wouldn't be illegal. This wouldn't have anything to do Title IX. I do agree those rich donors will pull all the best talent to California though.
For another example, suppose there were some chemical company organization that had a bylaw like, "You cannot print information about carcinogenic ingredients in your products." But then California passes prop 65. The bylaws are now moot -- if you have to choose whether to comply with bylaws or state law, you either have to take your ball and go home, or the bylaws have to change.