Players as Employees - Part 5

We have been tracking legal issues surrounding the issue of whether student-athletes in some circumstances are "employees," and all that entails. Dartmouth's basketball team has been a recent forum.* Although Dartmouth is a private entity and thus subject to NLRB regulation - unlike UC - the California PERB will often follow NLRB interpretation. But a recent Supreme Court case may now undermine the NLRB's position that the Dartmouth players are employees.

From Sportico:  

In a sign that a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling on a case that has nothing to do with sports could greatly impact the future of college athletics, Dartmouth College on Tuesday answered a complaint for an unfair labor practice charge by insisting its men’s basketball players are relying on “an impermissible attempt to create new law that is not entitled to deference and will not withstand judicial scrutiny.”

In a 10-page brief filed by attorneys at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius and Morgan, Brown & Joy, Dartmouth notably cited the Supreme Court’s June ruling in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. That case concerned regulatory fees imposed by a federal agency for the collection of conservation data by herring fishing companies. The Court held that courts may not defer to an agency interpretation merely because the statute is ambiguous. 

Loper Bright overruled the Supreme Court’s 1984 ruling in Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which held that courts were obligated to defer to agency interpretation when a statute was ambiguous and when the accompanying agency interpretation was reasonable or permissible. Loper Bright effectively means agencies are owed less deference from federal judges in interpreting statutes. Dartmouth appears to be banking on that point as it mounts a legal challenge over a statutory definition of employment...

Full story at https://www.sportico.com/law/analysis/2024/dartmouth-college-nlrb-answer-complaint-1234798663/.

===

*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2024/08/players-as-employees-part-4.html.