Wisconsin forward Nigel Hayes is one of two current college athletes that have been added as plaintiffs in an antitrust lawsuit seeking to allow student athletes to be paid beyond their athletic scholarships, according to Jon Solomon of CBSSports.com.
Hayes, a sophomore, was added to the lawsuit along with Middle Tennessee State football player Anfernee Stewart to replace three former collegiate players whose eligibility had recently expired: UTEP football player Kevin Perry, California football player Bill Tyndall and Rutgers men’s basketball player J.J. Moore.
Hayes and Stewart join Martin Jenkins, a defensive back on the Clemson football team, as the three plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
The Wisconsin athletic department released a statement reacting to Hayes’ decision.
“The department fully supports Nigel as a student, student athlete and team member,” said Assistant Director of Athletic Communications Patrick Herb in the statement. “In a free society, people can reasonably disagree about any issue, express their views and seek to vindicate them through the legal process.”
However, Herb also reiterated the athletic department’s stance on the ongoing debate over student-athlete compensation.
“The department is committed to the collegiate experience with education as its centerpiece,” Herb said in the statement. “It does not believe that the professionalization of intercollegiate athletics is the proper path to reform, or likely to benefit all student athletes.”
The antitrust lawsuit, originally filed in March by labor attorney Jeffrey Kessler in a New Jersey federal court, names the NCAA and its five power conferences (the Big Ten, SEC, Big 12, Pac-12 and ACC) as defendants.
The suit is seeking an injunction against NCAA rules that limit an athlete’s compensation and its main objective is to create a free market by eliminating the restrictions that “prevent athletes in Division I basketball and the top tier of college football from being fairly compensated for the billions of dollars in revenues that they help generate,” Kessler said in an interview with ESPN.
Kessler is one of the country’s most famous sports lawyers, having previously represented the National Football League Players’ Association in a landmark 1992 antitrust case that led to the establishment of free agency in the NFL.
The Jenkins lawsuit is the latest in a line of legal challenges that have been brought against the NCAA over the past years. Lawyers for former West Virginia running back Shawne Alston also filed a lawsuit against the NCAA in early March, accusing the Power Five conferences of “colluding” to cap the value of scholarships given to athletes.
The NCAA has also been named a defendant in a lawsuit seeking concussion damages from former players, and has also fought a challenge from a group of Northwestern football players who were seeking to form a student athletes’ union.
It was also on the losing end of a landmark ruling in August, when a federal judge ruled in favor of former UCLA men’s basketball player Ed O’Bannon, stating that NCAA rules that prohibit athletes from receiving compensation for their likenesses violates antitrust laws, according to the ruling.
According to CBSSports.com, the plaintiffs in the Jenkins lawsuit are scheduled to file their first motion for class certification Nov. 6.
