A group that advocates for college athletes on Tuesday announced it has filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, claiming that the NCAA’s limits on compensation for athletes has a disproportionate impact on Black athletes.
The complaint, made by the National College Players Association (NCPA), asks the department to end the NCAA’s compensation rules. Those restrictions also are under attack in federal courts and through filings with another federal agency.
“The limit on compensation is a violation of current civil rights law,” NCPA executive director Ramogi Huma told USA TODAY Sports, “and the Department of Education has the authority and jurisdiction and power and legal authority to address these violations.”
The new filing centers on how it says the NCAA’s rules impact Black athletes playing football at Football Bowl Subdivision schools and those playing men’s basketball and women’s basketball at Division I schools. It also claims that the NCAA’s limits result in “an abuse of Pell Grant funds” because this money — which the federal government awards to low-income students based on need — would not have to be provided to football and basketball players if they were “compensated fairly.”
The complaint seeks as its remedy: “The elimination of these civil rights violations and the abuse of Pell Grant funds by ending collusive athlete compensation limits among Division I colleges that deny fair market compensation to college athletes.”
While the complaint specifies FBS football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball, Huma said:  “We’re fighting for fair compensation for athletes in all sports as an organization. And if we are successful then the blanket cap on compensation will be lifted for athletes of all sports.”
Tuesday’s filing is the latest effort by the NCPA to further loosen the NCAA’s rules on compensation for athletes, who, over the past nine months have started being allowed to make money from the use of their name, image and likeness. This followed numerous state laws being passed to allow this activity and the Supreme Court unanimously ruling against the NCAA in the Alston antitrust case.
The NCPA and another athlete-advocacy group, the College Basketball Players Association, have filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board on behalf of football players and men’s and women’s basketball players.
“The big picture here is that we are looking to push the envelope with federal agencies,” Huma said. “There are agencies that already have legal authority to bring forward reform in NCAA sports that will benefit players. We don’t need a new labor law. College athletes are employees. We just have to have college athletes recognized as employees under existing laws.”
Meanwhile, there is an ongoing lawsuit in federal court in Pennsylvania that is seeking to have college athletes declared school employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act. A pending suit in California that is related to the Alston case not only seeks to have the NCAA’s compensation rules ended, it also seeks what would be an enormous damages claim based on amounts that the suit alleges past athletes would have received but for the NCAA’s rules.
The new complaint relies heavily on a 2019 study by the Center for American Progress, a Washington-based group that describes itself as “an independent, nonpartisan policy institute.” The study showed that among schools in the Power Five conferences Black scholarship athletes comprise a disproportionate percentage of the schools’ populations of all Black degree-seeking undergraduates, compared to their white counterparts.
This occurs against the backdrop of football and basketball being most college sports programs’ primary revenue-generating sports.
“The fact is that if scholarship limits across all sports were completely eliminated, the lion’s share of increased compensation would flow to FBS football and Division I basketball players,” the complaint states. “In essence, the primary function of having … limits is to deny fair compensation (to0 college athletes in predominantly Black sports. It is a simple truth that there would be no significant bidding wars among colleges for the best athletes in sports that are predominantly white because they do not generate comparable amounts of revenue for their colleges.”
The complaint goes on to connect the need for athletes to receive Pell Grant money – currently a maximum of nearly $6,500 a year – to the NCAA’s compensation limits.
According to the complaint, these funds “are used to subsidize compensation for many of the 20,000 FBS football, NCAA Division I men’s basketball, and NCAA Division I women’s basketball players who are undercompensated. If compensated fairly, virtually none of these athletes would qualify for Pell Grant funds.”

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