Seven years after former UCLA basketball star Ed O’Bannon filed a federal lawsuit against the NCAA over whether Division I men’s basketball and football players ought to be compensated for the commercial use of their names, images and likenesses, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied petitions by both O’Bannon and the NCAA to review the case.
The denial was expected. The Supreme Court only accepts about 1% of cases for review and frequently declines to hear cases of substantial importance to large classes of people—including, as illustrated here, thousands of college athletes, former college athletes and their respective universities.