Grambling State University women's basketball player Brenda McKinney is proceeding with a lawsuit she filed against the NCAA in 2023 that alleges the association discriminated against HBCU institutions through its academic reform programs.
According to the Miami Herald, McKinney argues that the NCAA included metrics in its Academic Performance Program that it knew would have a discriminatory effect on its HBCU member organizations.
Grambling State University women's basketball player Brenda McKinney is proceeding with a lawsuit she filed against the NCAA in 2023 that alleges the association discriminated against HBCU institutions through its academic reform programs.Â
According to the Miami Herald, McKinney argues that the NCAA included metrics in its Academic Performance Program that it knew would have a discriminatory effect on its HBCU member organizations.Â
"Black student-athletes were not provided full information about the potential consequences of the NCAA's discrimination against Black student-athletes at HBCUs," the lawsuit states. "As a result, unbeknownst to them, they entered their contracts with substantial disadvantages and effects."
Elizabeth Fegan, McKinney's attorney, said that the lawsuit is related to the NCAA's failure to live up to its own bylaws.Â
"We are not trying to prevent the NCAA from monitoring academic performance," Fegan said. "We want them to be educated and successful. But the NCAA promised in its bylaws to tie those measures to the student bodies of schools and that is where the NCAA has failed."
The NCAA maintains that the intent of the APP, which was adopted by the association in 2004, is to ensure that all college athletes gain a valuable education on a path toward graduation.Â
The NCAA also asserts that McKinney lack standing to pursue individual and class injunctive relief, as the Grambling women's basketball team has never face and APP-related postseason ban.Â
