COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost announced Thursday that he, along with six other state counterparts, have filed a federal antitrust lawsuit challenging the NCAA’s transfer eligibility rule.
Specifically he is seeking to allow student-athletes to have the ability to transfer multiple times.
The lawsuit challenges the NCAA's transfer rule "as an illegal restraint on college athletes’ ability to market their labor and control their education."
The rule requires college athletes who transfer among Division I schools to wait one year before competing in games, unless the National Collegiate Athletic Association waives the rule for a particular athlete. The NCAA began automatically exempting first-time transfers from the regulation in 2021 "but has continued to enforce the rule for subsequent transfers and to deny waivers for no legitimate reason," Yost stated.
“The rule is riddled with so many exceptions that the NCAA cannot plausibly substantiate its prior justifications,” Yost said. “We're challenging it in order to restore fairness, competition and the autonomy of college athletes in their educational pursuits.”
As part of the multistate lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia, the attorneys general are seeking a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to keep the NCAA from enforcing the rule. Yost himself got involved following the case of University of Cincinnati men's basketball player Aziz Bandaogo, whose second transfer from Utah Valley was originally denied before the NCAA eventually granted a waiver. His teammate Jamille Reynolds, however, is still being held off the court under similar circumstances.
“The ‘AA’ in NCAA might as well stand for ‘arbitrary and atrocious,’” Yost said. “The transfer eligibility rule needlessly curtails the fundamental rights of college athletes.”
Yost is being joined by the attorneys general of Colorado, Illinois, New York, North Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia in the lawsuit.
You can watch Yost's briefing in the player below:
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