Five past Seminoles people are suing Florida State hockey coach Leonard Hamilton, alleging that he fabricated their NIL remuneration to attract them to enroll in the program. Despite the discussion, the parties seem to believe on one basic thing: Whatever the manager does had done, he did not violate the terms of his work agreement.
In fact, the people directly state this in the civil complaint filed late last month, which alleges the manager made up a false promise to each of them for$ 250, 000 in NIL funds that never materialized.
The ex-players ‘ issue, which was filed on December 30 in Florida loop court, states that” Hamilton’s behavior fall outside the scope of his duties and responsibilities as the head men’s collegiate basketball coach for FSU.” Hamilton’s employment contract is not before the judge, and Hamilton erroneously promised the defendants that he was acting for FSU and that he was acting for them.

Rather than an act of generosity, this agreement reflects an knowledge of Florida’s sovereign immunity privileges. Like most other says, Florida’s laws protect the state, its firms and their workers from legal liability in most instances. It is based on a frequent rules principle that predates the 11th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which forbids states from bringing legal action in federal court without their consent.
The athletes suing Hamilton argue that Seminole Boosters Inc., the FSU athletic fundraising organization that operates as its own distinct 501 ( c ) ( 3 ) charitable organization, should be the one to use to supplement his and other FSU coaches ‘ salaries in an effort to circumvent this defense.
” We took a strategic approach”, lawyer Darren Heitner, who is representing the sportsmen, said in a telephone meeting. ” If there is a challenge]as to whether Hamilton ] is an employee of the school or of a separate business, the process by which he is paid is important”.
In the evolving, hostile landscape of college athlete compensation, where attending school can have a significant impact on determining the type of legal recourse you have in case of a dispute arises, the immunity issue is becoming more and more important. Public colleges are exempt from political immunity, but Division I schools are overwhelmingly made up of them.

For the time being, Florida serves as the beginning of what professionals anticipate will be a much larger nationwide trend of sportsmen suing coaches, institutions, and third-party organizations for compensation disputes they were promised.
The former high school quarterback Jaden Rashada, who signed his letter of intent to play for the University of Florida before the 2022-23 time, filed a second NIL-related court action against Hamilton next summer. Rashada had a first-time commitment to Miami before making the switch to the Gators, claiming UF alum Hugh Hathcock had convinced him that Gainesville would pay him a lot more NIL funds. Rashada claims he first agreed to a$ 13.85 million agreement with the standard NIL social before revoking after realizing the final payment was significantly lower than what was promised.
In May, Rashada filed suit in federal court against Gators head football coach Billy Napier, sports employee Marcus Castro-Walker, Hathcock and his company, Velocity Automotive Solutions, alleging scams and breach of contract. Rashada argues that due to the accused ‘ untruths, he missed out on a chance to make millions of dollars had he signed abroad. Rashada wrote that his knowledge “is indicative of the crimes running rampant in the world of big-time school football” and described himself as a canary in the coal mine in the problem.
The judge presiding over that situation is expected to rule rapidly on whether Napier and Castro-Walker, as the accused claim, are protected by royal immunity. Each defendant has substantively refuted the allegations, with Castro-Walker calling it a” juicy bestseller in the fiction genre” ( in court documents ). Rashada gradually left his UF determination to attend Arizona State, finally transferred to Georgia, and is now officially gearing up to reappear on the exchange site this spring.
The role of resistance in disputes over performer pay is also likely to change as universities begin compensating players for their NIL right instantly, as suggested in the proposed House v. NCAA arrangement and provided for by an increasing number of state regulations.

According to Eugene Egdorf, a Houston-based lawyer who has represented numerous college athletes in lawsuits against universities,” sovereign immunity will be a big problem that the athletes must take into account” if the schools are truly funding NIL. ” In a position like Texas, your NIL package may be totally illegal. Even in the example of cooperatives, lawyers may say they are facilitated with the schools and have privileges. I had definitely advise an gymnast to take these concerns into account when choosing where to play if I were to give them advice.
Joe Roden, one of the lawyers representing Rashada, echoed that public entreaty.
” If you enter into a commitment, and the deal is not legal according to royal resistance, you really haven’t advanced the ball”, Roden said. You are simply relying on other people’s good deeds.
A lawyer for Napier declined to comment, and Roden declined to comment on specific issues relating to Rashada’s case.
For college coaches, governmental immunity can serve as a double-edged sword—offering valuable protection as defendants, but imposing frustrating limitations when they seek to sue as plaintiffs.
To date, the most notable example of immunity’s role in a college sports lawsuit was Mike Leach’s long-running wrongful termination case against Texas Tech. The former Red Raiders football coach sued the university in 2009 after receiving a cause-effect termination, claiming that he remained owed$ 2.5 million in salary and bonuses. Leach’s case was eventually tossed on immunity grounds, a decision that was upheld on appeal.
In reversing a lower court’s ruling, a Texas appellate court wrote,” It is obvious that sovereign immunity is alive and well in Texas.” ” As it now exists, it provides a double shield to the entities it protects. They are protected from both legal and liability.
Texas is in fact regarded as having some of the tightest immunity protections of any state in the nation, remaining neutral even in disputes involving written contracts.

In a phone interview, Marty Greenberg, a seasoned sports lawyer who has represented dozens of college coaches, said he would urge his clients at Texas public universities to negotiate an immunity waiver in their contracts.
Who the hell would want to coach in Texas if they knew they would never get their day in court? Greenberg said. Such language and other attorneys who represent college coaches claim they’ve never heard of this kind of term being included in an employment agreement after reviewing Texas Tech’s current coaching contracts.
Despite Leach’s experience years earlier, in October 2020, former Texas Tech women’s basketball coach Marlene Stollings filed a lawsuit against the school and its athletic director, Kirby Hocutt, after she was dismissed amid multiple allegations of player mistreatment. Stollings, who is gay, accused the university and its top athletic administrator of breach of contract, fraud, retaliation and discrimination. In her complaint, Stollings ‘ legal team argued that Texas Tech had never indicated it would use this legal defense to avoid its contractual obligations and that the issue of sovereign immunity was never addressed.
” Mr. Hocutt…never suggested that Texas Tech would, under any circumstances, hide behind the doctrine of sovereign immunity”, the complaint stated.
However, the court allowed the federal discrimination and retaliation count against the school to advance while rejecting Stollings ‘ state law claims for immunity as well as each of the claims against Hocutt. Ultimately, the case was settled in August 2022.
In 2023, former Texas head men’s basketball coach Chris Beard, fired for cause after being arrested on charges of allegedly strangling his fiancée, chose not to sue the university for breach of contract, even after his fiancée recanted the allegation. This decision, it seems, was influenced by the lessons of Leach’s and Stollings ‘ cases, where the threat of sovereign immunity played a decisive role in the outcomes. ( Beard, now the coach at Ole Miss, did not respond to a request for comment. )

Similar to Texas, Florida’s immunity laws are regarded as among the most restrictive in the country. The Institute for Justice, a nonprofit public interest legal organization, has given Florida a D-minus when it comes to the ease of filing of civil rights claims under state law, Texas, by comparison, received a D. Without a waiver from the state legislature, plaintiffs can only sue a Florida government agency or employee by navigating a complex and limited set of exceptions.
According to Florida law, the state can be sued for tort claims—those seeking compensation for harm caused by wrongful acts—but it sets a maximum recovery limit of$ 200, 000 per incident.
In a 1984 ruling in Pan-Am Tobacco Corporation v. Department of Corrections, the Florida Supreme Court held that sovereign immunity is waived in cases involving an “express, written contract”. However, this choice is likely to be significant infringe on both Rashada and the Hamilton plaintiffs, at least in terms of the coaches, who are accused of writing off any NIL commitments.
The most efficient way to completely circumvent sovereign immunity in Florida is to demonstrate that the defendant knowingly or intentionally violated it, which is the contention at the heart of the two current NIL-related lawsuits in the state.
Rashada’s legal team has sought to separate Napier’s and Castro-Walker’s involvement in the alleged fraud from their roles at the public university. Rashada argued in an amended complaint filed in August that neither coach is technically an employee of UF because the university’s athletic department, likeFSU’s, is organized as a direct support organization ( DSO ) known as the University Athletic Association ( UAA ), despite the defendants ‘ actions infringing on their employment contracts.
In a motion to dismiss, Napier called this contention a” transparent attempt to circumvent … immunity”, adding,” the conduct alleged in the amended complaint involved the recruitment of a football player to the University’s team, a task clearly within the scope of]Napier’s ] employment as head football coach”.

Napier and Castro-Walker use the Florida Supreme Court’s decision in a previous lawsuit involving a college football player to extend sovereign immunity protections to another public university’s athletic department, which is run as a DSO, to support their case.
Ereck Plancher, a player from Central Florida who died during a preseason football practice, and his family sued the University of Central Florida Athletic Association (UCFAA ) in 2008 for his death. Despite having a sickle cell disorder, Plancher’s family claimed that the football staff unlawfully pushed the player beyond his physical limitations. A jury agreed with Plancher’s family, awarding$ 10 million in damages, but an appellate court later overturned the verdict, finding that UCFAA had been granted limited sovereign immunity with a maximum damages of$ 200, 000. The highest court upheld that judgment and stated that the legislature would grant them a waiver if the Planchers wanted to collect any money over the statutory cap.
Depends on the specifics of each case, particularly the level of control that a government agency has over the entity, as to whether a third-party entity is entitled to immunity. In consequence, courts may interpret the connection between the UCFAA and Central Florida differently than, say, FSU and the Seminole Boosters.
When asked why the booster organization was not named as a defendant, Heitner explained: ‘ I aimed to keep the complaint focused and concise, targeting those we believe are directly responsible. The Florida State University Athletic Association is the athletic department’s DSO, but as Sportico previously reported, very little money appears to be passing through it.
After the lawsuit was filed against Hamilton, Florida State issued a statement saying it was aware of” no unfulfilled commitments by FSU” and adding that it” support ]ed ] Coach Hamilton’s right to defend himself against these allegations.”

Heitner contends that by specifically framing it as the coach’s defense burden, FSU tacitly acknowledged the dispute is outside of Hamilton’s employment and, by virtue, the sweep of sovereign immunity.
Meanwhile, Napier and Castro-Walker have also appealed to a Florida federal court’s dismissal last year of a case brought against UF, the UAA and Learfield, the school’s athletic multimedia rights partner, over alleged data privacy violations on the Gators ‘ team website. The judge decided that the two entities were protected by the 11th Amendment, which generally states that federal courts have no jurisdiction over lawsuits brought against states, state agencies, or state officials unless they decide to waive the immunity.
This is unquestionably a benefit of coaching at a public university in Florida for the time being. But depending on how the future unfolds, it could just as easily turn into a liability.