Trump administration rescinds Biden-era college athlete pay guidance

The Trump administration is rescinding a Biden-era memo that declared higher education institutions could violate federal anti-sex discrimination laws if they failed to provide “equivalent” opportunities to women student-athletes when paying them for the use of their name, image and likeness rights.

"The NIL guidance, rammed through by the Biden Administration in its final days, is overly burdensome, profoundly unfair, and it goes well beyond what agency guidance is intended to achieve," said Craig Trainor, the department's acting assistant secretary for civil rights.

An NCAA spokesperson declined to comment.

A nine-page department fact sheet issued in the waning days of former President Joe Biden's administration said it did not have the force and effect of law and was not meant to be binding. But its message reverberated among college athletics leaders who had pressed Biden's Education Department to issue specific guidance on how schools can comply with Title IX considering a pending proposal to settle three antitrust lawsuits that targeted restrictions on pay and benefits players can receive for their work and publicity rights.

Schools would have been responsible for ensuring that they are offering equal athletic opportunities in their athletic programs, including in the NIL context, Biden's civil rights office said. The department further declared that when schools give student-athletes financial assistance, including payment for the use of their publicity rights, “such assistance also must be made proportionately available to male and female athletes.”

Trump's administration has now rejected that view.

"Without a credible legal justification, the Biden Administration claimed that NIL agreements between schools and student athletes are akin to financial aid and must, therefore, be proportionately distributed between male and female athletes under Title IX," said Trainor, who Trump just nominated to serve as assistant secretary of housing and urban development.

"Enacted over 50 years ago, Title IX says nothing about how revenue-generating athletics programs should allocate compensation among student athletes. The claim that Title IX forces schools and colleges to distribute student-athlete revenues proportionately based on gender equity considerations is sweeping and would require clear legal authority to support it. That does not exist."