California student athletes fall in fight for licensing payments

U.S. Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler dismissed, for the second time, a class action by California high school athletes challenging the California Interscholastic Federation's ban on student athletes licensing their name, image and likeness tied to school affiliation.

Plaintiffs narrowed their market definition to California varsity athletes by sport and added a national broadcast-market theory, but Beeler found the suppression they described flowed from amateurism and transfer rules already shielded from antitrust review, not from the NIL rule itself. She also found California's right-of-publicity statute independently permits broadcast use without consent, cutting off their revenue-share theory entirely.

Beeler left a narrow path open: a market theory for school-affiliated NIL licensing outside broadcasting, tied specifically to the challenged rule. Representatives for both sides did not immediately comment.

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