If a work-study student is paid on an hourly basis to sell popcorn at games, shouldn’t their classmate playing in those games also be paid an hourly rate?
That’s the central thesis of Johnson v. NCAA, a case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. If Johnson is successful, college athletes would be recognized as employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act. They would then be owed an hourly rate consistent with rates paid to their classmates on work study.
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“The fact [that a student on work study] might get an academic scholarship,” lead attorney Paul McDonald told Sportico in an exclusive interview, and “also work for the university in the dining hall or work at a game as a ticket taker—the university can’t say because you have an academic scholarship that they get to then have you work wherever they want you to work and not pay you.”
McDonald, a graduate of Princeton University and New York University School of Law, has practiced law at two of the country’s most elite law firms, Kirkland & Ellis and Paul Hastings. He also served as senior counsel at Kraft Foods.
McDonald is now leading a case on behalf of unpaid former and current athletes from such colleges as Villanova, Fordham and Cornell. The case hasn’t attracted much attention from the college sports media but is clearly on the minds of the NCAA. The organization recently filed a brief to the Third Circuit in which it maintained that despite losing, 9-0, at the U.S....
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