Justices Take Up NCAA Case Challenging Athlete-Compensation Rules | Trump Administration Wants To Stop Mail Delivery Abortion Pills Amid Pandemic
December 16, 2020
ALL RIGHT NOW
|The Supreme Court today agreed to consider a case that could upend the college sports business model. Justices will decide whether the NCAA violated federal antitrust law with its efforts to keep tight limits on compensating college athletes. Brent Kendall and Louise Radnofsky with The Wall Street Journal report, “The court, in a brief written order, said it would hear the NCAA’s appeal of lower court rulings that found the association unlawfully limited competition for college athletes by adopting a restricted view of the kinds of compensation the athletes could receive related to their education. Those rulings allowed college athletes to receive an expanded range of education-related benefits, such as laptop computers or musical instruments, study abroad programs, internships and paid-for graduate school. The rulings didn’t lift NCAA limits on athlete compensation unrelated to education.”
COULD GO ALL THE WAY
|“The justices’ decision to take the case adds a momentous element of uncertainty to an enterprise that has been shaken by state and Congressional legislative efforts concerning not only athletes’ ability to make money from their name, image and likeness, but also the fairness of their overall treatment by the schools for which they help generate billions of dollars annually.” That’s Steve Berkowitz with USA Today also covering the Supreme Court taking up the NCAA case.
SEND IT
|Greg Stohr with Bloomberg reports the Trump administration has asked SCOTUS to put a stop to mail delivery of abortion pills during the pandemic. The administration wants to reinstate a requirement that says women must visit a medical facility to obtain the pills, renewing a request it had made in October that was rejected when JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG was still on the bench. “The Oct. 8 Supreme Court order said the government should first ask a federal trial judge in Maryland to consider modifying or lifting his order blocking the in-person requirement. At the time, the justices said they weren’t making an assessment on the merits. U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang reaffirmed his order last week, saying that progress on vaccines and treatments for Covid-19 ‘has not meaningfully altered the current health risks and obstacles to women seeking medication abortions.'”
POD DU JOUR
|The latest episode from NPR’s Throughline podcast explores the evolution of the Supreme Court’s power. SCOTUS has final say over what is and isn’t constitutional, and the pod examines when it “got ultimate power.”
PREACHING TO THE CHOIR
|Pete Williams and Dareh Gregorian with NBC News review the Supreme Court’s ruling yesterday in favor of houses in worship in Colorado and New Jersey that were opposing pandemic-related capacity limits on services. The two rulings come after the Supreme Court decided a case out of New York last month in which justices issued an injunction blocking GOVERNOR CUOMO from enforcing 10- and 25-person occupancy limits on religious institutions.