House v. NCAA May Be Settled, but Congress Is Not

In the first Congressional hearing since the House v. NCAA settlement was approved, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce convened to debate a Republican-led proposal aimed at granting broad but ill-defined “liability protections” to the NCAA, conferences and schools in an effort to bring greater stability to college athletics.

The hearing, titled “Winning Off the Field,” centered on draft legislation introduced this week by committee chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) and Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R-Fla.). The legislation is called the SCORE Act, short for “Student Compensation and Opportunity through Rights and Endorsements.”

“The timing could not be more appropriate for legislative action, in my opinion,” said Bilirakis, chairman of the subcommittee on commerce, manufacturing and trade. “This is not just another proposal. It’s a targeted solution designed to bring predictability, fairness and long-term balance to a system that has rapidly evolved without structure.”

He continued: “We are here to put forward a framework that strengthens college sports—ensuring athletes can succeed on the field without losing sight of their future off of it.”

While the House settlement may represent a turning point in the political debate over college sports, Thursday’s hearing suggested it has done little to foster bipartisan consensus in Congress, where Republicans currently hold a narrow eight-seat majority in the House.

Committee Republicans urged legislative action to restore order to what they described as a chaotic college sports landscape, shaped by conflicting state laws and constant legal challenges from athletes. In contrast, Democrats argued that proposals like the SCORE Act primarily serve to protect powerful institutions at the expense of college athletes’ rights and freedoms.

The hearing also hinted at the potential for increased polarization, particularly with former President Donald Trump now expressing interest in the issue—an involvement that could inject both political energy and deeper partisan rancor.

Rep. Frank Pallone, a Democrat from New Jersey, used his opening remarks to criticize the Trump administration’s recent efforts to cut university research funding and block Harvard from enrolling international students. He argued that the committee should prioritize addressing those issues before turning its attention to intercollegiate athletics.

“The bottom line is there is not going to be any college sports if there are no colleges, or if colleges have no money,” Pallone said. “That’s where we’re headed with the Trump administration.”

As initially floated, the SCORE Act would codify the central terms of the House v. NCAA settlement into federal law, thereby protecting them from future legal challenges. It would also explicitly declare that college athletes are not employees of their institutions—effectively shutting down the Johnson v. NCAA case and blocking similar antitrust litigation—while granting the NCAA and conferences sweeping authority to regulate transfer eligibility and compensation standards. Finally, it proposes an additional, undefined “limitation on liability,” designed to insulate the NCAA and other collegiate sports bodies from potential lawsuits.

Committee Democrats argued that the bill represented a significant setback in the progress made toward securing rights for college athletes.

“I’m deeply disappointed,” said Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.), a former Division I volleyball player who has proposed several college sports reform bills in recent years. “For the second year in a row, Republicans on the committee are advancing a partisan college sports bill that protects the power brokers of college athletics at the expense of the athletes themselves.”

As a matter of process, Trahan argued that the draft legislation was “crafted behind closed doors,” with Democrats first learning of it through leaked copies shared with lobbyists and reporters late last week.

She added that the House v. NCAA settlement was not evidence of a broken system, as members across the aisle suggested, but rather a sign of the judicial system functioning as intended.

“We have a system where the NCAA conferences and their member institutions set rules,” Trahan said. “Athletes can challenge them, and if the rules are unfair, courts can intervene, or a deal can be struck. This bill rewrites that process to guarantee that people in power always win, and the athletes who fuel this multibillion-dollar industry always lose.”

Rep. Yvette D. Clarke (D-N.Y.) echoed Trahan’s view, suggesting that the current turmoil in college sports reflects not just dysfunction, but also progress.

“To call this the Wild West, or the NIL era is ridiculous,” Clarke said. “Let’s call this what it really is, the era of athlete empowerment. We should embrace that, not seek to rein it in just because the job of the college athletic director got a little harder.”

To bolster their resistance, Democratic committee members relied on a familiar face, Ramogi Huma, the executive director of the National College Players Association, who has testified before this same Congressional committee numerous times over the last two decades.

“Much of this bill chases the myth of creating a level playing field among college athletic programs,” Huma, a critical force behind California passing the nation’s first NIL law in 2019, said. “The truth is that there’s never been a level playing field.”

Huma reiterated his previous criticism of the House settlement, which caps schools’ revenue-sharing with college athletes’ far below that of professional sports leagues and bans payments to players from so-called “associated entities” like boosters and NIL collectives. He argued that this could result in athletes losing up to $2 billion in potential NIL earnings, while allowing schools to effectively “re-monopolize” that revenue.

Testifying in support of the draft legislation, William King, associate commissioner of the Southeastern Conference, argued that the House settlement—along with the newly formed College Sports Commission intended to oversee it—could only succeed if Congress provided it with relief from ongoing litigation.

“We do not seek broad antitrust exemption or blanket antitrust immunity,” King said “What we seek is more limited than that, protection from lawsuits that challenge conduct and regulations that are consistent with or codified in a federal law passed by Congress.”

Ashley Cozad, a former University of North Florida swimmer and past chair of the Division I NCAA Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, also spoke in support of the legislation. 

“While it is evident that NIL has had positive impacts on student-athletes, the lack of transparency in the lack of uniform regulation, due to different state laws, has created an unstable environment,” said Cozad, who now works as a high school English teacher in Jacksonville, Fla. “The hodgepodge of state laws remains a nightmare for student-athletes who are often unsure of what rules apply.”

Cozad also championed the SCORE Act’s provision prohibiting college athletes from being classified as employees, arguing that such a system would ultimately harm the opportunities of athletes in Olympic sports. In contrast, Huma argued that college athletes should be afforded the same rights under federal labor laws as other workers.

For the most part, Democrats supported Huma’s stance.

“The schools want to put something together that looks like the past,” Rep. Marc Veasey (D-Texas), a former high school sports reporter, said. “And let me tell you, the past was not perfect, the past was jacked up, and these kids were being exploited … I don’t want to take that away from future student-athletes.”

While Rep. Russell Fry, a Republican from South Carolina, generally supported the SCORE Act, he raised concerns about potential overreach by the federal government.

“While Congress, I think, has an authority [to act] here, I also worry a little bit too about how much that authority goes,” Fry said. “You don’t want to go too far and create more problems than you’ve solved.”