High school athletes face court setback in lawsuit over compensation

By Mike Scarcella

WASHINGTON, Jan 12 (Reuters) - A federal judge in San Francisco has dismissed most of a proposed class action challenging restrictions on how high school students can earn money from athletics, allowing only a narrow claim over sponsorships to move forward.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler ruled on Friday that the California Interscholastic Federation is mostly immune from antitrust claims targeting rules that limit cash sporting awards and student-athlete transfers between schools in the state.

But Beeler said a proposed class of students can continue to challenge a rule that prohibits athletes from earning money from sponsorships while wearing high-school uniforms.

The judge also dismissed a group of media defendants from the lawsuit, saying they had no role in formulating the athletic rules at issue in the case.

Lawyers for the named plaintiff did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The California Interscholastic Federation declined to comment.

The lawsuit is among the first in the United States seeking to break down barriers to compensation for potentially hundreds of thousands of current and former high school athletes, including by allowing students or their sponsors to commercialize students' names, images and likenesses for branding and advertising.

The California Interscholastic Federation serves more than 800,000 athletes annually and is the country’s largest youth sports agency, according to the lawsuit. The federation’s members include more than 1,600 public and private high schools in California.

The lawsuit, filed in June, challenged an amateurism rule that says students can’t receive athletic awards of more than $250 for regular season games or $500 for post-season games. The lawsuit also targeted a rule that curtails transfers between schools for athletic reasons.

The California Interscholastic Federation had denied any wrongdoing and urged Beeler to dismiss the lawsuit entirely. "This case is an attempt to use antitrust law to reshape high school sports in California," it said.

In her ruling, Beeler said the state's regulatory scheme shows lawmakers "anticipated and intended restraints on competition in favor of the objectives of amateurism and prioritizing education."

Beeler said the plaintiffs could file an amended lawsuit by Feb. 2.

The case is Dominik Calhoun v. California Interscholastic Federation, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 3:25-cv-4603.

For plaintiff: Yaman Salahi of Salahi PC, and Joel Young of The Tidrick Law Firm

For California Interscholastic Federation: C. Scott Lent and Daniel Asimow of Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer

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