John Hult, South Dakota Searchlight
Attorney General Marty Jackley is resisting an attempt to move South Dakota’s lawsuit against the NCAA into federal court.
Jackley and the South Dakota Board of Regents sued the NCAA last month, alleging that a proposed $2.8 billion settlement meant to compensate college athletes would unfairly burden smaller colleges, including schools like South Dakota State University and the University of South Dakota.
The proposed settlement would require NCAA member schools to contribute to the settlement fund over the course of a decade. The South Dakota lawsuit says its schools would shoulder an unfair share of the burden, and that larger schools in big-name athletic conferences ought to pay more.
The South Dakota lawsuit also alleges that the settlement unfairly funnels a majority of the settlement dollars to male athletes.
The settlement is an outgrowth of a 2021 U.S. Supreme Court case that the NCAA’s previous practice of banning payments for student athletes violated antitrust laws.
Last week, the NCAA filed a motion in the U.S. District Court of South Dakota to move the case on to that federal court docket. The NCAA says federal court is the proper venue, as the settlement’s provisions and its implications stretch across state lines.
On Tuesday, however, Jackley filed a motion to resist that move. The Attorney General says the case belongs in Brookings county, home to one of the schools potentially affected by the NCAA’s settlement proposal.
The case does not make claims about the NCAA breaking federal law, Jackley said in a press release on the matter, and does not involve “significant federal issues.”
“We believe this case should remain in state court,” Jackley wrote in the press release.