NCAA Sues Ohio Governor DeWine Over Executive Order on Player Eligibility
The NCAA filed a federal lawsuit against Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Friday, October 16, the Associated Press and USA Today reported, three days after DeWine signed an executive order allowing the state's universities to let athletes who graduated from high school in 2022 play an extra year of college sports, in defiance of the NCAA's new five-for-five eligibility rule adopted in June, which covers athletes from the class of 2023 onward.
The 41-page filing seeks injunctive and declaratory relief on three grounds: that the order unlawfully burdens interstate commerce under the Commerce Clause by conferring an advantage on Ohio institutions; that it violates the First Amendment; and that it violates state law because the governor lacks authority to permit schools to disregard rules they agreed to follow as NCAA members. NCAA President Charlie Baker called the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Ohio, an 'extraordinary step' to prevent the governor from making it 'impossible for all schools to compete on a level playing field,' and said DeWine was attempting to give Ohio institutions a 'hall pass' to break the rules.
Ohio has 13 Division I programs, including Ohio State, Xavier and Cincinnati. DeWine's office said it was declining comment on the litigation. 'This whole thing has become comical,' Tennessee athletic director Danny White wrote on social media. The NCAA suing a governor is rare but not unprecedented; it won a case in the early 1990s against then-Nevada Governor Bob Miller over a state due-process law.
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