The National Labor Relations Board on Wednesday heard its five unfair labor practice allegations against the College Basketball Players Association ( CBPA ), an advocacy group founded by former University of Minnesota governor Michael Hsu. According to those accusations, the National Labor Relations Act’s National University, Northwestern University, Dartmouth College, the Ivy League, and the NCAA unlawfully classified sports as” student athletes” when they are employed. The NLRB is expected to give the payments.
The actions come in response to the resignation of the Service Employees International Union, Local 560, the union representing Dartmouth College men’s baseball players, and the removal of the National College Players Association’s unfair labor training complaint regarding University of Southern California basketball and men’s and women’s hockey players.

The main lesson: Legal efforts have come to an end that require the Board to identify at least some D-I university athletes as employees of their institutions as well as their conferences and the NCAA.
College players who are recognized for their achievements won’t be able to find employment through the NLRB, at least for the immediate future. It may occur through prosecution, including the ongoing situation Johnson v. NCAA. In Johnson, D-I players assert that they are people under the Fair Labor Standards Act and therefore have a right to at least the lowest required income. The situation has enjoyed success to date.
Additionally, a condition may pass a law saying some or all D-I players at schools in that position are employees, in some labor-friendly states, there have been discussions of such regulations. A team at a public university with union issues that fall under state labor law ( but not the NLRA ) might also be able to form a union.
It appears far less likely that Congress could go and sign a rules recognizing some or all D-I college athletes as employees, but it is still possible. In addition, it is highly unlikely that Congress would pass and sign a rules recognizing school athletes as employees, which would then face legal challenges under Equal Protection and state preemption.
The NLRB’s work ‘ failure is not reflected in the end of them. Instead, they embodied concerns that the new administration’s NLRB do attempt to set bad precedent for other student organizers.

To that stage, the Dartmouth players were “winning” in the sense that next February, NLRB local director Laura Sacks held they were people, because they perform work in exchange for compensation ( including preferred admittance into an elite university, per diem, clothing, shoes, etc. The school has the authority to oversee that work, respectively. In terms of the NCPA, NLRB regional director Mori Rubin and NLRB general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, who in a powerful memo from 2021 insisted that D-I college athletes are employees and have been misclassified as student-athletes, supported it.
But the NLRB is undergoing major changes. Abruzzo is anticipated to step down or be replaced. In his first term, Trump’s NLRB general counsel, Peter Robb, rescinded a memorandum authored by his predecessor, Richard Griffin, that reasoned D-I college athletes were employees. Last month, the U.S. Senate voted not to hold a confirmation vote on Lauren McFerran’s nomination as the organization’s nominee. She was thought to be in favor of having D-I college athletes as employees. That was also key.
The agency’s five-member board now has two vacancies, which Trump will fill, giving the board a 3-2 Republican majority. The board may have agreed that some D-I college athletes are employees, but the organizers of these petitions felt that the risk was too great for the majority of the board to support the opposite position.
Uncertainty about whether players would be able to appeal a negative NLRB decision to a federal court of appeals is a related factor. Although the NLRA and the Administrative Procedure Act give a union the right to challenge a negative outcome of a charge of unfair labor practice, the NLRA does not permit a union to do so if it has been found not to represent the players. The “worst case” scenario for the players would have been if the NLRB had rejected a union as the players ‘ representative and failed to address the substance of the unfair labor practice allegations because the union had already been denied representation status.

In an interview with Sportico on Monday, Hsu hinted he and his group were likely to withdraw their petitions. He also emphasized that the labor dispute is still ongoing.
” I’m more than ever convinced that D-I college athletes are employees within the meaning of the NLRA,” Hsu said via phone. There is no denying that they are generating billions of dollars for the industry or that they are under the control of their universities, conferences, and the NCAA. It’s unknown whether their recognition as employees occurs through the NLRB, at the state level, or in court, but it will happen.
Daniel Libit contributed to this story.