A federal choose on Thursday denied Tennessee level guard Zakai Zeigler’s request for a preliminary injunction permitting him to play a fifth season of Division I basketball in 5 years.
U.S. District Choose Katherine A. Crytzer listened to arguments in a listening to June 6 in Knoxville and entered her denial Thursday morning. She wrote that Zeigler did not reveal he would probably achieve his argument that the NCAA maintaining him from taking part in a fifth season of Division I basketball is a violation beneath the Sherman Act.
“This Courtroom is a court docket of regulation, not coverage,” Crytzer wrote in her order denying the injunction. “What the NCAA ought to do as a coverage matter to profit pupil athletes is past the attain of the Sherman Act and TTPA and by extension, this Courtroom.”
The 2-time Southeastern Convention defensive participant of the yr requested for an injunction when he sued the NCAA on Could 20 over its guidelines limiting him to 4 seasons in a five-year window as an illegal restraint of commerce beneath each federal and Tennessee legal guidelines.
His lawsuit argues he might earn between $2 million and as a lot as $4 million with one other season. His attorneys made clear that is only a first step on this authorized combat.
“We’re disenchanted the Courtroom declined to grant a preliminary injunction on the idea that the NCAA doesn’t immediately management NIL compensation, simply days after the Home settlement confirmed they’d do precisely that,” in accordance with an announcement from Litson PLLC and the Garza Legislation Agency.
“This ruling is simply the primary chapter of what we consider will finally be a profitable problem. We intend to press ahead and are evaluating the very best path forward for Zakai.”
The choose wrote that the harms Zeigler argues he would undergo could be addressed with a future damages award.
She additionally famous the “fastened variety of roster spots” for every Division I basketball workforce and that “an injunction would run the danger of harming presently enrolled gamers dedicated to a college and present highschool seniors being recruited.”
The NCAA argued in its transient earlier than the listening to that Zeigler’s injunction request ought to be denied as a result of he’s asking the court docket to make him the primary athlete in historical past to play a fifth season in Division I “as a matter of proper.”
Throughout the listening to, the choose requested Zeigler’s attorneys to file a fast transient answering whether or not or not Zeigler is an “intercollegiate athlete” as outlined beneath state regulation and what authorized customary applies to Zeigler’s declare beneath the Tennessee Commerce Practices Act.
The Related Press contributed to this story.
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