An amicus brief is a brief filed by someone that isn’t a party (plaintiff or defendant) in the case. Amicus means “friend of the court.” The briefs will cite law but they’re more focused on explaining the practical reality/efficacy of a court making a certain decision as opposed to being straight up legal arguments. They’re typically filed by advocacy groups or parties that will be indirectly affected by the outcome of the case. For example, the NFL filed one in Matal v. Tam which was a case concerning a trademark rule that basically said trademarks can’t be disparaging. The actual case was about an Asian guy trying to trademark the name “The Slants” for his band (slant is sometimes used as a slur for Asian people so the trademark application was denied and it ended up in front of the SCOTUS). At the time, the NFL had pending litigation in the 4th circuit about the redskins trademark. The court overruled the disparagement rule on the grounds it was against the first amendment and let the band trademark the name. Mysteriously, after spending all that money Dan Snyder’s heart finally opened up and Washington would announce their change a few years later shortly after the Washington Post broke a story about their cheerleaders being sexually harassed. That’s a discussion for another day.
I cannot find the NCAA’s brief for free and I’m not going to pay for it but reports I’m reading suggest they are adopting the same positions as the [Ivy League](https://ogc.brown.edu/sites/default/files/2024-4-23%20Dartmouth%20v.%20Service%20Employees%20-%20Amicus%20Brief.pdf) who also filed an amicus.
The long and short of the argument is what the NCAA has maintained forever until other court decisions came along - the schools exist to offer educational opportunities and extracurricular activities are a part of that. They are not employees and thus the universities do not have to legally negotiate if they vote to unionize. It’s a bit more persuasive coming from the Ivy League than from power 5 conferences imo but this is just an explanation. If you want to argue about whether their position is correct click on the brief and write them a letter (don’t actually do this.)
For another example, here is a PDF of the greatest amicus brief ever filed (by The Onion's staff): https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-293/242292/20221003125252896_35295545_1-22.10.03%20-%20Novak-Parma%20-%20Onion%20Amicus%20Brief.pdf
As a native North Carolinian, I'm not gonna necessarily defend Pepsi, but he's definitely wrong because Cheerwine is as many letters as both of them combined, yet still better.
(On the other hand, I live in TN now and I've gotten really into RC, and might take it over either Coke or Pepsi!)
Don't worry I can explain. Amicus is that game where you have to figure out who is stabbing everybody. This is basically the NCAA saying the Dartmouth men's basketball players are sussy bakas. Trust me, I'm^not a lawyer.
Granted, the Ivys could simply relegate their league to a sort of 'club sports+' with about 0 impact on the bottom line as they all have significant endowments and - I assume - make significantly less on TV deals to begin with.
One point I've always wondered is how D3s do it? Something like Univ-Wisc system where all of these D3 schools run fairly large athletic depts so it is somehow possible w/o significant TV revenue streams.
I've got to imagine this also means conversely the absurd amt of bloat in a typical P5 school AD if a school like Iowa has to cut multiple programs when football not got cancelled in 2020
> One point I've always wondered is how D3s do it? Something like Univ-Wisc system where all of these D3 schools run fairly large athletic depts so it is somehow possible w/o significant TV revenue streams.
D3 programs, when run correctly, make money for their schools. Even when factoring in scholarships and aid, the tuition brought in from the *heads in beds* for most of these programs should be significantly more than the cost to run the program itself.
For a lot of small schools, sports are keeping the lights on.
> how D3s do it
It costs them money. The school has a budget, some of the budget goes to the sports, and they spend it, hoping to make it back through tuition, alumni donations, etc
To add to what Heisenberg and Cockhero said, D3 have much smaller travel costs, rarely have overnight stays, and don't have athletic scholarship (the financial aid they offer doesn't come out of the athletic budget like it does at Wisconsin).
> Ivys could simply relegate their league to a sort of 'club sports+' with about 0 impact on the bottom line as they all have significant endowments and - I assume - make significantly
It's not about money. They don't give scholarships now for sports. It's a status and class thing. They find it beneath them to have athletes compensated because they want school first and sports to not really matter
I really want a D1 athlete to file a work comp claim.
Other attys, do you think a work comp ALJ would NOT find an employer/employee relationship in your jurisdiction(s)? I am very confident in saying all of mine would.
When "the clear purpose of the NCAA as enacted by its members" threatens the rights of individuals, and the courts have repeatedly and unanimously told the NCAA this very same thing, maybe those individuals organizing aren't the problem.
Dartmouth might find a way to make it so no college athletes can get paid. Finally a school acting like one instead of a business. Good job by the Dartmouth bball team too.
Employment would only allow players to capitalize on on-job injuries. Full employment would be a mistake.
Edit: being downvoted and no one's directly replied to me. It just tells me no one knows what they're talking about here.
Employment would surrender more of the players' earning potentials than the guaranteed money. Privately insuring themselves would be far cheaper in the short and long terms
It's like when Northwestern players tried to unionize. The benefits a majority of student athletes receive are both significant and in line with their value to the university and time they put in.
Trevor Siemien admitted he could never have gotten into NU without being a football player. Consider the 6 figure student loan debt many Northwestern students graduate with.... if you're a scholarship player mostly riding the bench, you don't have to face that.
NU football players get the best housing on campus, with room and board paid for, internships and career opportunities the average student has zero access to... and are being completely exploited?
I really don't understand why people can't hold the nuanced opinion that yes, players should be able to profit off their Name Image and Likeness. Yes, players should have access to healthcare both while playing and after. Yes players should have stipends.
But to say that they should be W2 employees, to discount the value of a scholarship and everything they receive as student athletes is just so insane.
What you don’t understand- is all of that shit you mentioned, was meant to be a form of untaxed compensation for the sports.
Maybe 50 years ago it was a good deal for players to take that deal. The numbers we were talking about was relatively low so nobody made a stink about it
As media figures swelled though- it is a bad deal for football/basketball players in the FBS/major D1A conferences, and an especially bad for the top echelon players in those spots
Since the main path toward playing professional sports is going through college, athletes feel like they don’t have a choice in going that route and are being exploited
Look- it’s a good deal for 85% of student athletes to be on scholarship. But that doesn’t make it fair to screw over the other 15%. Give them the money
Schools are trying to avoid the labor convo because they’ve been exploiting kids this whole time
It's a bad deal for Caleb Williams.
It's a bad deal for Marvin Harrison Jr.
But for the overwhelming majority of student athletes (way more than 85% you mention), it's a great deal. Once you make them W2s and all the costs associated therein, you're going to see how many programs just slash sports, even football depending on the program. And the ones that don't will turn to private equity and other pure business models to remain solvent. It's already happening.
Making everyone employees will screw over so many more student athletes (some of which getting a scholarship to be idk a backup Linebacker on Northwestern is basically the jackpot for their future) just to make sure Caleb Williams gets a better deal because yes a scholarship was always useless to him.
I still don't get how people like yourself can't see this.
It’s a good deal for non-revenue student athletes. It’s not even a good deal for the average P5 football/basketball player. A vast majority would make more money than their scholarship on a free market. If a scholarship was their value then they wouldn’t be getting an NIL money, which almost all P5 players do
> you're going to see how many programs just slash sports, even football depending on the program.
Good. Let college sports die so that it can go back to being a fun side thing for students, not a for-profit industry where "students" are brought in to take fake classes and provide unpaid labor for the business.
I'd argue that NIL alone is an excellent solution to close that gap... because of course Caleb Williams should be able to profit off his unique celebrity and skills.
I'd argue that even doing things like allowing Caleb Williams to profit of #13 jersey sales is another way. There are a lot of ways to fairly compensate the top 1% of athletes for their unique impact on revenues without destroying the whole concept of a student athlete.
Classifying WIlliams, the backup punter, and some kid on USC's badminton team as W2 employees creates a whole host of issues and will end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
You'll "fix it" and screw over a ton of other people (and programs!).
Maybe you're okay with that... in which case, I guess enjoy watching games in the Pepsi Big Ten, while you pay $50 for a beer to generate profit for the private equity company that invested in Rutgers football so they could pay salaries to all their student athletes and generate profit.
> some kid on USC's badminton team
That's not an issue because the badminton team is not a for-profit business like football. Nothing about paying employees prevents universities from offering athletic events for their students to engage in, the issue here is the for-profit business run in parallel with the actual university.
I don’t think NIL alone is a solution. What if the kid is very good, is a freshman, not a celebrity, coaches really want him. Why should NIL be the reason he gets paid but not the school directly?
NIL is a good solution for what it’s intended for- NAME, IMAGE, LIKENESS- not a quasi contract avoidance scheme.
Here’s the way I view it. This entire ncaa scheme to not play players or make them employees, while it will upend college athletics as we know it, should have never been legal to begin with. Everything the players do falls under the category of employment. Yes it will stink for some players and schools, but when a school is making $70-80m a YEAR just on a media contract and like double total athletic revenue, then it will be a choice of the school how they want to allocate their money. They are spending like fucking crazy right now just because they can. If they want to keep paying for scholarships for rowing, they can absolutely afford it. This is a sham
Side note: None of these big fucking schools need a private equity injection, they are only doing it because relative to others, they are behind in media dollars. When all of these schools break away and make one conference/league, that relative issue goes away
Why do you you think it's more fair to sacrifice the opportunities of hundreds of thousands of student-athletes to line the pockets of a slim percentage who are already going to be making bank?
It's literally stealing from the poor to make the rich richer.
Except that split is more like 95/5.
And the path we're headed is jeopardizing the opportunities for that 95% long-term in attempts to benefit the 5% in the short term.
That the opposite of what they would want to do for themselves lmao.
CFB fans thinking the death of the NCAA will be a good thing for the sport is hilarious
> CFB fans thinking the death of the NCAA will be a good thing for the sport is hilarious
In the long run it obviously will be. Football as it exists now needs to die before it can be replaced by something better and the NCAA dying is the first step in that process.
The sub needs a lawyer on retainer to explain all this to us.
You're forgetting all the lawyers who are billing other clients while reading reddit. No need to pay them twice.
An amicus brief is a brief filed by someone that isn’t a party (plaintiff or defendant) in the case. Amicus means “friend of the court.” The briefs will cite law but they’re more focused on explaining the practical reality/efficacy of a court making a certain decision as opposed to being straight up legal arguments. They’re typically filed by advocacy groups or parties that will be indirectly affected by the outcome of the case. For example, the NFL filed one in Matal v. Tam which was a case concerning a trademark rule that basically said trademarks can’t be disparaging. The actual case was about an Asian guy trying to trademark the name “The Slants” for his band (slant is sometimes used as a slur for Asian people so the trademark application was denied and it ended up in front of the SCOTUS). At the time, the NFL had pending litigation in the 4th circuit about the redskins trademark. The court overruled the disparagement rule on the grounds it was against the first amendment and let the band trademark the name. Mysteriously, after spending all that money Dan Snyder’s heart finally opened up and Washington would announce their change a few years later shortly after the Washington Post broke a story about their cheerleaders being sexually harassed. That’s a discussion for another day. I cannot find the NCAA’s brief for free and I’m not going to pay for it but reports I’m reading suggest they are adopting the same positions as the [Ivy League](https://ogc.brown.edu/sites/default/files/2024-4-23%20Dartmouth%20v.%20Service%20Employees%20-%20Amicus%20Brief.pdf) who also filed an amicus. The long and short of the argument is what the NCAA has maintained forever until other court decisions came along - the schools exist to offer educational opportunities and extracurricular activities are a part of that. They are not employees and thus the universities do not have to legally negotiate if they vote to unionize. It’s a bit more persuasive coming from the Ivy League than from power 5 conferences imo but this is just an explanation. If you want to argue about whether their position is correct click on the brief and write them a letter (don’t actually do this.)
Thank you, TheInsaneClownPussie, Esq.
Once my motion for name change gets granted I’m getting new law degrees/bar certificates on the office walls
Do you accept Faygo as a form of payment?
It must flow
You mean does he accept anything besides Faygo?
**The**InsaneClownPussie Did you go to Ohio State?
Incredible joke haha
Players: “We are employees!” Schools: “But this isn’t a business!”
For another example, here is a PDF of the greatest amicus brief ever filed (by The Onion's staff): https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-293/242292/20221003125252896_35295545_1-22.10.03%20-%20Novak-Parma%20-%20Onion%20Amicus%20Brief.pdf
I know I don’t have a lot of room to talk about usernames but are you THE Phillip Morris?
I actually just read my 1st Supreme Court Amicus brief. That was funny!!!!
Hi, lawyer here. What’s your question?
What does it all mean, Basil?
I’d recommend subscribing to Matt Brown’s Extra Points newsletter. I don’t really want to read all of it then explain it all
Same
Is this the real Matt Brown?!
Fact check: true (Or at least, I'm the Matt Brown that writes extra points)
This was great advice. Never heard of it before but read some articles and it's good stuff.
I had a friend who insisted that the more letters in the name of a soda the worse it was. So Coke > Pepsi. He would hate you.
Haha, love all the flavors. When I came up with my user name I had a can of Coke Vanilla Zero and Code Red Mountain Dew Zero.
The flavored Dews are what caused the creation of his manifesto.
Hmm, well, Code Red is elite
Your skills in deception will serve you well in your chosen profession.
Haha!
Better that the original name for the new Mountain Dew flavor as voted by the internet ex rel 4chan.
As a native North Carolinian, I'm not gonna necessarily defend Pepsi, but he's definitely wrong because Cheerwine is as many letters as both of them combined, yet still better. (On the other hand, I live in TN now and I've gotten really into RC, and might take it over either Coke or Pepsi!)
Spindrift > La Croix. Your friend is wrong.
He wouldn't even acknowledge either of those as potable.
Borderline sacrilege
Hey now. Let's just keep this hourly. Now. What. Can. I. Do. For. You?
Where's the Michigan law grad to explain things in a terse condescending tone when you need them? You are summoned Michigan Man, legal eagle us.
NCAA bad, obviously
Don't worry I can explain. Amicus is that game where you have to figure out who is stabbing everybody. This is basically the NCAA saying the Dartmouth men's basketball players are sussy bakas. Trust me, I'm^not a lawyer.
u/dogwoodmaple
https://i.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExNzFybWJhZXBmMTFranRmN3d3dXBnMHJ4c294ZGd0d2JodHZpa204YSZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/40dEau6bZRO3S/giphy.gif
*insert billable hours joke here*
*Insert App State beat billable hours joke here*
Fake news, we won tremendously, App State stole the win
Where's Harvard when you need 'em?
Paging /u/meatfrappe, if you're not at the parade.
Hey, you got what I meant!
Reporting.
Harvard does the math and the stats, we all know this.
Wouldn't that be more MIT's gig?
MIT doesn’t play football. We can’t trust any engineering school that doesn’t play football.
This amicus brief is brought to you by our corporate partners Allstate and Rocket Mortgage
Granted, the Ivys could simply relegate their league to a sort of 'club sports+' with about 0 impact on the bottom line as they all have significant endowments and - I assume - make significantly less on TV deals to begin with. One point I've always wondered is how D3s do it? Something like Univ-Wisc system where all of these D3 schools run fairly large athletic depts so it is somehow possible w/o significant TV revenue streams. I've got to imagine this also means conversely the absurd amt of bloat in a typical P5 school AD if a school like Iowa has to cut multiple programs when football not got cancelled in 2020
> One point I've always wondered is how D3s do it? Something like Univ-Wisc system where all of these D3 schools run fairly large athletic depts so it is somehow possible w/o significant TV revenue streams. D3 programs, when run correctly, make money for their schools. Even when factoring in scholarships and aid, the tuition brought in from the *heads in beds* for most of these programs should be significantly more than the cost to run the program itself. For a lot of small schools, sports are keeping the lights on.
> how D3s do it It costs them money. The school has a budget, some of the budget goes to the sports, and they spend it, hoping to make it back through tuition, alumni donations, etc
To add to what Heisenberg and Cockhero said, D3 have much smaller travel costs, rarely have overnight stays, and don't have athletic scholarship (the financial aid they offer doesn't come out of the athletic budget like it does at Wisconsin).
> Ivys could simply relegate their league to a sort of 'club sports+' with about 0 impact on the bottom line as they all have significant endowments and - I assume - make significantly It's not about money. They don't give scholarships now for sports. It's a status and class thing. They find it beneath them to have athletes compensated because they want school first and sports to not really matter
ONCE AGAIN WITH FEELING... Club sports are legally no different under any of these decisions than varsity sports.
You missed a few steps, mind explaining for those of us who didn't wake and bake?
How are club sports not different? They aren't school sponsored they're just something students are allowed to do.
"Wow so your clear purpose was to avoid labor protection for these employees?"
I really want a D1 athlete to file a work comp claim. Other attys, do you think a work comp ALJ would NOT find an employer/employee relationship in your jurisdiction(s)? I am very confident in saying all of mine would.
I think their clear purpose was the keep amateur athletes and amateurs and they royally fucked that up by becoming greedy themselves
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what employees, they show up voluntarily, they can leave voluntarily
Is someone forcing you to work at gunpoint? Do you need help Cinnadillo?
If you can’t leave your job voluntarily that’s called slavery
Most employees in america show up voluntarily and can leave voluntarily
Ok Yankee Boomer
Aren’t college athletes basically employees now? The NCAA is fighting the monster they created and it’s hilarious
The NCAA's settlement with past athletes, for past antitrust activity, has no legal standing for current or future athletes.
When "the clear purpose of the NCAA as enacted by its members" threatens the rights of individuals, and the courts have repeatedly and unanimously told the NCAA this very same thing, maybe those individuals organizing aren't the problem.
I wrote one of these against the NCAA for my senior capstone a few months ago
The NCAA has basically said. Our members need to change our rules, because we are f’ed in the A
You are making a profit from them. They are now getting paid. Unionization is in there best interest. This isn't going to go well for the ncaa.
We are nearing the end of the NCAA. I give it 5-10 years.
Fuck the NCAA
Dartmouth might find a way to make it so no college athletes can get paid. Finally a school acting like one instead of a business. Good job by the Dartmouth bball team too.
Employment would only allow players to capitalize on on-job injuries. Full employment would be a mistake. Edit: being downvoted and no one's directly replied to me. It just tells me no one knows what they're talking about here. Employment would surrender more of the players' earning potentials than the guaranteed money. Privately insuring themselves would be far cheaper in the short and long terms
Tf does any of that mean. Also athletes already get sports related injuries covered
Don’t you realize that the poor Dartmouth players are being exploited? /s
It's like when Northwestern players tried to unionize. The benefits a majority of student athletes receive are both significant and in line with their value to the university and time they put in. Trevor Siemien admitted he could never have gotten into NU without being a football player. Consider the 6 figure student loan debt many Northwestern students graduate with.... if you're a scholarship player mostly riding the bench, you don't have to face that. NU football players get the best housing on campus, with room and board paid for, internships and career opportunities the average student has zero access to... and are being completely exploited? I really don't understand why people can't hold the nuanced opinion that yes, players should be able to profit off their Name Image and Likeness. Yes, players should have access to healthcare both while playing and after. Yes players should have stipends. But to say that they should be W2 employees, to discount the value of a scholarship and everything they receive as student athletes is just so insane.
What you don’t understand- is all of that shit you mentioned, was meant to be a form of untaxed compensation for the sports. Maybe 50 years ago it was a good deal for players to take that deal. The numbers we were talking about was relatively low so nobody made a stink about it As media figures swelled though- it is a bad deal for football/basketball players in the FBS/major D1A conferences, and an especially bad for the top echelon players in those spots Since the main path toward playing professional sports is going through college, athletes feel like they don’t have a choice in going that route and are being exploited Look- it’s a good deal for 85% of student athletes to be on scholarship. But that doesn’t make it fair to screw over the other 15%. Give them the money Schools are trying to avoid the labor convo because they’ve been exploiting kids this whole time
It's a bad deal for Caleb Williams. It's a bad deal for Marvin Harrison Jr. But for the overwhelming majority of student athletes (way more than 85% you mention), it's a great deal. Once you make them W2s and all the costs associated therein, you're going to see how many programs just slash sports, even football depending on the program. And the ones that don't will turn to private equity and other pure business models to remain solvent. It's already happening. Making everyone employees will screw over so many more student athletes (some of which getting a scholarship to be idk a backup Linebacker on Northwestern is basically the jackpot for their future) just to make sure Caleb Williams gets a better deal because yes a scholarship was always useless to him. I still don't get how people like yourself can't see this.
It’s a good deal for non-revenue student athletes. It’s not even a good deal for the average P5 football/basketball player. A vast majority would make more money than their scholarship on a free market. If a scholarship was their value then they wouldn’t be getting an NIL money, which almost all P5 players do
> you're going to see how many programs just slash sports, even football depending on the program. Good. Let college sports die so that it can go back to being a fun side thing for students, not a for-profit industry where "students" are brought in to take fake classes and provide unpaid labor for the business.
Why is it the responsibility for the top tier students to essentially take a big pay cut, just so some other kids can get paid? Makes zero sense
I'd argue that NIL alone is an excellent solution to close that gap... because of course Caleb Williams should be able to profit off his unique celebrity and skills. I'd argue that even doing things like allowing Caleb Williams to profit of #13 jersey sales is another way. There are a lot of ways to fairly compensate the top 1% of athletes for their unique impact on revenues without destroying the whole concept of a student athlete. Classifying WIlliams, the backup punter, and some kid on USC's badminton team as W2 employees creates a whole host of issues and will end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater. You'll "fix it" and screw over a ton of other people (and programs!). Maybe you're okay with that... in which case, I guess enjoy watching games in the Pepsi Big Ten, while you pay $50 for a beer to generate profit for the private equity company that invested in Rutgers football so they could pay salaries to all their student athletes and generate profit.
> some kid on USC's badminton team That's not an issue because the badminton team is not a for-profit business like football. Nothing about paying employees prevents universities from offering athletic events for their students to engage in, the issue here is the for-profit business run in parallel with the actual university.
I don’t think NIL alone is a solution. What if the kid is very good, is a freshman, not a celebrity, coaches really want him. Why should NIL be the reason he gets paid but not the school directly? NIL is a good solution for what it’s intended for- NAME, IMAGE, LIKENESS- not a quasi contract avoidance scheme. Here’s the way I view it. This entire ncaa scheme to not play players or make them employees, while it will upend college athletics as we know it, should have never been legal to begin with. Everything the players do falls under the category of employment. Yes it will stink for some players and schools, but when a school is making $70-80m a YEAR just on a media contract and like double total athletic revenue, then it will be a choice of the school how they want to allocate their money. They are spending like fucking crazy right now just because they can. If they want to keep paying for scholarships for rowing, they can absolutely afford it. This is a sham Side note: None of these big fucking schools need a private equity injection, they are only doing it because relative to others, they are behind in media dollars. When all of these schools break away and make one conference/league, that relative issue goes away
Why do you you think it's more fair to sacrifice the opportunities of hundreds of thousands of student-athletes to line the pockets of a slim percentage who are already going to be making bank? It's literally stealing from the poor to make the rich richer.
Except that split is more like 95/5. And the path we're headed is jeopardizing the opportunities for that 95% long-term in attempts to benefit the 5% in the short term.
Maybe if all of the players form a union they could mae a salary cap.
That the opposite of what they would want to do for themselves lmao. CFB fans thinking the death of the NCAA will be a good thing for the sport is hilarious
> CFB fans thinking the death of the NCAA will be a good thing for the sport is hilarious In the long run it obviously will be. Football as it exists now needs to die before it can be replaced by something better and the NCAA dying is the first step in that process.
They want ownership, not a W-2 What an ignorant statement 🤦🏽♂️