Fair Pay to Play Act | |
---|---|
California State Legislature | |
Full name | Fair Pay to Play Act |
Introduced | February 4, 2019 |
Assembly voted | September 9, 2019 [1] |
Senate voted | May 22, 2019 [1] |
Signed into law | September 30, 2019 |
Sponsor(s) | Sens. Nancy Skinner, Scott Wilk, Steven Bradford |
Governor | Gavin Newsom |
Code | Education Code |
Resolution | SB 206 |
Website | leginfo.legislature.ca.gov |
Status: Current legislation |
The Fair Pay to Play Act, originally known as California Senate Bill 206, [2] is a California statute that will allow collegiate athletes to acquire endorsements and sponsorships while still maintaining athletic eligibility. [3] The bill would affect college athletes in California's public universities and colleges.
The bill was introduced by Senator Nancy Skinner [4] and co-authored by Scott Wilk and Steven Bradford. [5] The bill passed the California State Senate 31 to 5, with Shannon Grove voting against the bill, on May 22, 2019, [6] with the California Assembly unanimously passing it on September 11, 2019. [7] The bill was bolstered by testimony from former Stanford women's volleyball star and 2015 national freshman of the year Hayley Hodson, and Oklahoma State University football star Russell Okung. [8] [9] [10] [11]
The impetus for the bill came when Skinner met antitrust economist Andy Schwarz. [12] [13] Schwarz had been involved in the O'Bannon litigation and was looking for a new way to advance athletes rights after that case had resulted in only modest gains. [14]
The Supreme Court's recent decision in NCAA v. Alston sheds light on modern federal attitudes towards student athlete compensation.[2] In this case, the Court struck down any potential limitations on education-related benefits that student athletes may receive.[2] Most notably, the Court—and especially Justice Brett Kavanaugh—rejected the NCAA's "amateurism" argument as an overly broad and outdated defense for failing to allow its revenue-drivers (i.e., student athletes) to receive compensation. [15] The NCAA contended that the Court should defer to its amateurism model because it is a joint venture along with its member schools, but the Court instead reasoned that deference was inappropriate since the NCAA has a monopoly in the relevant market. [15] The Court further rejected the NCAA's appeal that it was not a "commercial enterprise," noting the "highly profitable" and "professional" nature of certain college sports. [15] Shortly after the Court's decision in Alston, the NCAA issued an interim name, image, and likeness policy which permits student athletes to earn this type of compensation. [16] States have also followed suit by enacting their own laws. [17] For example, Illinois Public Law 102-0042 permits athlete to receive market-value compensation for use of their name, image, and likeness. [18]
Gavin Newsom signed the bill into law on September 30, 2019. The law was scheduled to go into effect in 2023, but was moved up to an effective date of September 1, 2021 thus enabling student-athletes to own their own name, image, and likeness, and profit from them, just like any other college student or citizen can. [19] [20]
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges and helps over 500,000 college student athletes who compete annually in college sports. The organization is headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Personality rights, sometimes referred to as the right of publicity, are rights for an individual to control the commercial use of their identity, such as name, image, likeness, or other unequivocal identifiers. They are generally considered as property rights, rather than personal rights, and so the validity of personality rights of publicity may survive the death of the individual to varying degrees, depending on the jurisdiction.
The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) established in 1940, is a college athletics association for colleges and universities in North America. Most colleges and universities in the NAIA offer athletic scholarships to their student athletes. For the 2023-24 season, it had 241 member institutions, of which two are in British Columbia, one in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the rest in the continental United States, with over 83,000 student-athletes participating. The NAIA, whose headquarters is in Kansas City, Missouri, sponsors 28 national championships. CBS Sports Network, formerly called CSTV, serves as the national media outlet for the NAIA. In 2014, ESPNU began carrying the NAIA Football National Championship.
College athletics in the United States or college sports in the United States refers primarily to sports and athletic training and competition organized and funded by institutions of tertiary education.
NCAA Football is an American football video game series developed by EA Sports in which players control and compete against current Division I FBS college teams. It served as a college football counterpart to the Madden NFL series. The series began in 1993 with the release of Bill Walsh College Football. EA eventually acquired the licensing rights to the NCAA name and officially rechristened the series with the release of NCAA Football 98.
Nancy Skinner is an American politician and a member of the California State Senate. A Democrat, she represents California's 9th State Senatorial district, encompassing the East Bay.
Edward Charles O'Bannon Jr. is an American former professional basketball player in the National Basketball Association (NBA). He was a power forward for the UCLA Bruins on their 1995 NCAA championship team. He was selected by the New Jersey Nets with the ninth overall pick of the 1995 NBA draft. After two seasons in the NBA, he continued his professional career for another eight years, mainly playing in Europe.
NCAA Basketball is a series of college basketball video games that was published by EA Sports from 1998 until 2009. After EA Sports' rival publisher 2K Sports cancelled its own college basketball game, College Hoops, in 2008, EA changed the name of the series from NCAA March Madness to NCAA College Basketball. The series was discontinued on February 10, 2010.
Claudia Ann Wilken is a senior United States District Court Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.
Ramogi Huma is the executive director of the National College Players Association (NCPA), a 501c3 nonprofit advocacy group launched by UCLA football players.
Jeffrey L. Kessler is a partner at the international law firm Winston & Strawn, where he also serves as Co-Executive Chairman and Co-Chair of the firm's Antitrust/Competition Practice and is a member of the firm's Executive Committee. Until May 2012, he was the global litigation chair at the international law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf, where he was also the co-chair of the sports litigation practice group and served on the firm's executive and leadership committees. His major clients include the Panasonic Corporation, National Football League Players Association (NFLPA), the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA), William Morris Endeavor, Activision Blizzard, Avanci, the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA), United States Women’s National Team (USWNT) soccer players, NTN Corporation, Relevent Sports, and Actors' Equity Association.
O'Bannon v. NCAA, 802 F.3d 1049 was an antitrust class action lawsuit filed against the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). The lawsuit, which former UCLA basketball player Ed O'Bannon filed on behalf of the NCAA's Division I football and men's basketball players, challenges the organization's use of the images and the likeness of its former student athletes for commercial purposes. The suit argues that upon graduation, a former student athlete should become entitled to financial compensation for NCAA's commercial uses of their image. The NCAA maintains that paying its athletes would be a violation of its concept of amateurism in sports. At stake are "billions of dollars in television revenues and licensing fees."
Sydney Kai Kamlager-Dove is an American politician serving as the U.S. representative for California's 37th congressional district since 2023. A Democrat, she previously served in the California State Senate, representing the 30th district. She has also served in the California State Assembly and as a trustee for the Los Angeles Community College District.
The definition of amateurism within the context of collegiate sports has evolved since it was first pronounced by the NCAA upon its inception in 1906. In its early stages, changes in the NCAA's core beliefs in what a student-athlete should be rewarded and allowed to accept financially for their athletic talents had its effects on the definition of amateurism. Over the course of the 20th and early 21st century, regulatory changes, court claims, and the beliefs of NCAA authority about student-athlete compensation further developed what an amateur collegiate athlete is entitled to receive. This evolution is what impacted the evolving logistics of the NCAA Bylaw 12, which explains the current definition of amateurism and what it grants or restricts a collegiate athlete to be able to receive as compensation for their participation. These guidelines have been described to both benefit and unjustifiably limit the student-athlete and the success of institutions’ athletic performance. This debate has been a strong driver in court claims against the NCAA and the mainstream controversy about what student-athletes should have the right to receive financially.
The Orrin G. Hatch–Bob Goodlatte Music Modernization Act, or Music Modernization Act or MMA is United States legislation signed into law on October 11, 2018 aimed to modernize copyright-related issues for music and audio recordings due to new forms of technology such as digital streaming. It is a consolidation of three separate bills introduced during the 115th United States Congress.
The 2019 NCAA Division I FBS football season was the highest level of college football competition in the United States organized by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in 2019. The regular season began on August 24, 2019, and ended on December 14, 2019. The postseason concluded on January 13, 2020, with the 2020 College Football Playoff National Championship at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans. The LSU Tigers defeated the defending champion Clemson Tigers by a score of 42–25 to claim their first national championship in the College Football Playoff (CFP) era, and fourth overall. It was the sixth season of the College Football Playoff (CFP) system.
Jon Echols is an American politician who has served in the Oklahoma House of Representatives from the 90th district since 2012. He is the Majority Floor Leader.
Hayley Hodson is a former Stanford University volleyball player. She was listed as the number one college volleyball recruit by Volleyball magazine in April 2015, and she was the named National Freshmen of the year and All-American by the American Volleyball Coaches Association and Volleyball Magazine in the same year.
National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Alston, 594 U.S. ___ (2021), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case concerning the compensation of collegiate athletes within the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). It followed from a previous case, O'Bannon v. NCAA, in which it was found that the NCAA was profiting from the namesake and likenesses of college athletes. The case dealt with the NCAA's restrictions on providing college athletes with non-cash compensation for academic-related purposes, such as computers and internships, which the NCAA maintained was to prevent the appearance that the student athletes were being paid to play or treated as professional athletes. Lower courts had ruled that these restrictions were in violation of antitrust law, which the Supreme Court affirmed in a unanimous ruling in June 2021.
In college athletics in the United States, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has historically resisted efforts to compensate college athletes. However, after years of effort by those in favor of student-athlete compensation, culminating in the Supreme Court's decision in NCAA v. Alston (2021), college athletes may now earn compensation for their name, image, and likeness (NIL).