The eight U.S. universities known as the Ivy League on Thursday won dismissal of a prospective class action by current and former student athletes challenging the schools’ bans on sport scholarships and other compensation for their athletes.
Reuters reports that the Connecticut-based U.S. District Judge Alvin Thompson ruled, that the students could not establish that the schools were harming competition in a specific, relevant market as required for antitrust claims.
The Ivy League schools stand alone among the more than 350 schools in the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s Division I – the top level for college sports – that do not offer athletic scholarships.
The lawsuit, among a wave of compensation claims by student athletes in recent years, accused the schools of forming an illegal price-fixing agreement.
“At best, the plaintiffs’ allegations of anticompetitive effects relate to just some market participants, not effects in the market as a whole,” Thompson wrote in his ruling.
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