Sen. Cory Booker Praises NCAA Court Ruling: ‘People Over Profits’

NEWARK, NJ — A unanimous decision from the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday may be a game changer for many college athletes. But there’s still “much more work to do” before the playing field is truly level, according to U.S. Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey.

On Monday, Booker cheered a ruling from the nation’s highest court, which expanded the types of compensation that athletes will be able to get in exchange for playing college sports – a multi-billion-dollar industry in the United States.

Booker hailed the ruling as a victory for a group of former and current college athletes, who launched an antitrust lawsuit against the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) longstanding restrictions on paying players.

“Today’s decision is a major blow to the current exploitative model of college sports, but we still have so much more work to do,” said Booker, a former tight end for the Stanford University football team and a Newark resident.

“It’s long past time the NCAA put people over profits and start prioritizing the health and education of these college athletes,” the senator said.

Prior to the decision, schools were only allowed to offer their players tuition and fees, room and board, books and other expenses related to the cost of attendance. They were also permitted to make payments for certain athletic participation awards, tutoring and study abroad expenses related to a course, CNN reported.

Monday’s ruling allows colleges to offer their student-athletes unlimited compensation, as long as it’s connected to their education in some way, ESPN reported.

That could possibly include free laptops or paid post-graduate internships worth thousands of dollars, reports say. However, the NCAA will still be allowed to forbid schools from paying students salaries, or giving them outlandish gifts to lure them to their programs that aren't connected to a legitimate educational purpose, Fox News stated.

"Under the current decree, the NCAA is free to forbid in-kind benefits unrelated to a student’s actual education," Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in an opinion for the court.

"Nothing stops it from enforcing a 'no Lamborghini' rule," Gorsuch added.

“The NCAA’s business model would be flatly illegal in almost any other industry in America,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a concurring opinion.

According to the court syllabus, here are the nuts and bolts of the case:

“Colleges and universities across the country have leveraged sports to bring in revenue, attract attention, boost enrollment, and raise money from alumni. That profitable enterprise relies on ‘amateur’ student-athletes who compete under horizontal restraints that restrict how the schools may compensate them for their play. The NCAA issues and enforces these rules, which restrict compensation for student-athletes in various ways. These rules depress compensation for at least some student-athletes below what a competitive market would yield. Against this backdrop, current and former student-athletes brought this antitrust lawsuit challenging the NCAA’s restrictions on compensation. Specifically, they alleged that the NCAA’s rules violate §1 of the Sherman Act, which prohibits “contract[s], combination[s], or conspirac[ies] in restraint of trade or commerce.”

Booker has been a vocal supporter of changing the rules when it comes to compensating college athletes.

During a U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation hearing earlier this month, Booker said that college athletes are being “cynically exploited” by an industry that's making $15 to $25 billion in profits from their labor.

“Modern college athletics is a de facto for-profit industry that is just too often exploiting men and women – taking advantage of their genius, of their talent, of their artistry, robbing many of them of earnings in their peak years, leaving them often injured with a lifetime worth of costs,” Booker alleged.

• See related article: Should New Sports Stadiums Get Federal Tax Breaks? N.J. Senator Says No

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