High school and college athletics associations have several rules that regulate an athlete’s eligibility to compete and their ability to transfer schools. Courts have traditionally held that private athletic associations have the right to regulate athletes in any way, as agreed upon by association members.
However, with college athletes now earning compensation from NIL deals and revenue-sharing, as well as transferring schools seemingly at will, athletes and their schools are now going to court seeking injunctions that challenge long-standing association rules.
An injunction is a court order directing one of the parties in a lawsuit to either do something or to stop doing something. In the case of high school and college athletes, the injunction, if granted, prevents the athletic association from enforcing its rules against the athlete. Injunctions are vital for high school and college athletes because they allow the athlete to compete in their sport while their case proceeds to trial. Without such a remedy, chances are an athlete’s season — and perhaps career — would be over by the time a case is decided by the court.
Injunctions and TROs
An injunction is what is considered an equitable remedy and is only issued to prevent irreparable harm in situations where monetary compensation would be inadequate. There are three forms of injunctive relief: a temporary restraining order, a preliminary injunction and a permanent injunction.
A temporary restraining order (TRO) is a short-term measure intended to preserve the status quo until a more formal hearing can be held. TROs often are used in urgent situations and usually effective for a maximum of 10 days. Injunctions, both preliminary and permanent, are extraordinary remedies that also are designed to preserve the status quo. A preliminary injunction is granted prior to a full hearing and decision of the case. A permanent injunction is issued after a full hearing and as part of a final judgment.
Although the standard for issuing a TRO is the same as for an injunction, the emphasis is on irreparable harm in the context of maintaining the status quo.
A case in which a TRO was the sought-after remedy is Tennessee v. NCAA, 715 F. Supp. 3d 1048 (E.D. Tenn. 2024). Due to the rise of NIL opportunities in college athletics, collectives — independent businesses separate from universities and athletics departments — have been formed to facilitate NIL opportunities for student-athletes. In seeking a TRO, the states of Tennessee and Virginia claimed that the NCAA’s rules, referred to as the “NIL-recruiting ban,” prevented prospective student-athletes from negotiating NIL deals during the recruiting process and violated federal antitrust law. In rejecting the states’ request for a TRO, the court held that Tennessee and Virginia failed to demonstrate the irreparable harm required to allow issuance of a TRO.
This failure is not inconsequential because irreparable harm is an indispensable requirement for injunctive relief.
Four factors
When deciding whether to grant an injunction request, the courts need to consider four factors:
1. The party seeking the injunction must show that they have a strong likelihood or probability of success on the merits of their claim.
2. The party seeking the injunction must show that they would suffer irreparable harm if the court did not issue the injunction and that legal remedies such as monetary damages would be inadequate.
3. The court must consider whether the harm suffered by the plaintiff if no injunction is granted outweighs the potential harm the injunction would cause to the defendant.
4. The court needs to consider whether the public interest would be served by the issuance of the injunction.
An example of a successful pursuit of a preliminary injunction is Pavia v. NCAA, 760 F. Supp. 3d 527 (2024). Diego Pavia, the quarterback for Vanderbilt University, estimated that he could earn over $1 million in NIL compensation during the 2025-26 season. However, under NCAA rules, Pavia had no remaining eligibility. He therefore sought an injunction precluding the NCAA from enforcing its eligibility rules, claiming that the rules violated antitrust law.
To establish a likelihood of success on the merits, the court held that Pavia must show more than a mere possibility of success. In reviewing whether the NCAA’s rules violated antitrust law, the court applied a rule-of-reason analysis and found that the rules restricting participation have a substantial anticompetitive effect in the labor market for college football. While the NCAA argued that further economic analysis was necessary to determine whether the challenged rules have anticompetitive effects, the court concluded that the rules were a restraint on trade with substantial anticompetitive effects. Accordingly, Pavia showed a strong likelihood of success on the merits of his claim.
As for irreparable harm, the court concluded — as the court in Ohio v. NCAA, 706 F. Supp. 3d 583 (2023) and many other courts have — that the denial of the ability to play sports is irreparable harm. Therefore, since the parties all agreed that the case was not likely to be resolved before the fall 2025 season, the court found that Pavia had shown he would suffer irreparable harm before this case could be resolved.
The court also found that the balance of equities and the public interest weigh in favor of granting the injunction. The scope of the injunctive relief sought, the court held, was narrow and only applied to Pavia playing one season. When the court compared that to the harm the NCAA would suffer if Pavia was allowed to complete, the balance favored granting preliminary injunctive relief.
Finally, the court concluded, the public interest was served by promoting free and fair competition in the labor markets.
Varying degrees of legal success
In the wake of the court’s decision in Pavia, a number of college athletes who had exhausted their eligibility brought suit seeking to enjoin the NCAA from enforcing its rules. These cases have met varying degrees of success.
In Robinson v. NCAA, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 161352, the court issued a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit filed by West Virginia University defensive lineman Jimmori Robinson, running back Tye Edwards, safety Justin Harrington and wide receiver Jeff Weimer challenging the NCAA’s eligibility rules. In granting the players’ motion for preliminary injunction, the court held that the players would clearly suffer harm if the injunction were denied. The players would be forced to forfeit an entire season of football at WVU, along with the accompanying benefits of travel, national exposure, and opportunities for professional advancement or NIL agreements — opportunities that contribute to the team’s success and foster valuable relationships.
Moreover, the court noted that the case was not likely to be resolved on the merits before the 2025 season, so plaintiffs had shown irreparable harm.
In Bellamy v. NCAA, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 152042, four former athletes likewise sought to enjoin the NCAA from enforcing eligibility rules precluding them from playing college football during the 2025 season. In rejecting the players’ motion, the court held that unlike Pavia, in which immediate preliminary relief was necessary to preserve his opportunity to negotiate NIL compensation for the coming season, the players in this case did not make such a showing. In particular, the court noted that although the denial of the ability to play sports can constitute irreparable harm, the denial of preliminary relief does not necessarily foreclose the possibility that they could regain the opportunity to play if their claim is successful on the merits.
In Sanchez v. NCAA, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 37500, Alberto Osuna Sanchez, who played two years of junior college baseball and three years at the University of North Carolina, challenged the NCAA’s eligibility bylaws that rendered him ineligible to play a fourth year of Division I baseball. With the 2025 baseball season set to begin, Sanchez moved for a TRO. In denying the players’ motion, the court held that the record did not establish that the NCAA’s JUCO Rule had a substantial anticompetitive effect. Therefore, since Sanchez could not demonstrate a strong likelihood of success on his antitrust argument, his request for a preliminary injunction was denied.
What can athletics administrators learn from the above cases?
First, while this article focuses on college sports, at the high school level, even if an athlete is able to secure a court injunction allowing them to play, a number of high school athletic associations have rules that require the school to forfeit all contests in cases in which the player is eventually ruled ineligible, even if they played under a court order. Such is the case in Hartland, Wis., where a September court injunction allowed Tristen Seidl to play football for Arrowhead High School despite an ongoing transfer eligibility dispute with the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association stemming from his family's move to the district after a house fire. This places the school in a catch-22 position of either playing the athlete and later having to forfeit all games in which they played, or not playing the athlete at all. Meanwhile, in Alabama, governor Kay Ivey sued the Alabama High School Athletic Association over its policy of sidelining school-choice voucher recipients from sports participation for a full year before regaining their eligibility at a new school, and a court’s temporary restraining order barred the AHSAA from enforcing the policy.
Second, as the aforementioned collegiate cases illustrate, the courts are not uniform in how they view NCAA eligibility rules. While it is impossible to know which way the court will ultimately come down on the issue, what is clear is that the landscape surrounding college sports in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2021 decision in NCAA v. Alston, which opened the door to student-athlete compensation, is anything but decided.
Similarly, while the NCAA has modified its eligibility rules since Pavia, the issue of whether NCAA rules violate antitrust law is not yet settled.
