IP Law Daily, PUBLICITY RIGHTS—2d Cir.: Dismissal of decade-old claims by student-athletes against the NCAA affirmed, (Dec 16, 2025)

By Martin A. Steinberg, J.D.

A slew of lawsuits have accused the NCAA and its member conferences of conspiring to suppress competition and monopolize the market for student-athletes’ NIL by coercing athletes to sign eligibility forms that transferred their perpetual NIL rights without compensation.

In a nonprecedential summary order, the Second Circuit affirmed the dismissal with prejudice of a putative class action brought by former NCAA men’s basketball players asserting antitrust and unjust-enrichment claims based on the NCAA’s historical use of student-athletes’ names, images, and likenesses (NIL). The court held that the plaintiffs’ Sherman Act damages claims were barred by the four-year statute of limitations, rejecting reliance on the continuing-violation doctrine, speculative-damages accrual, and equitable tolling, and concluding that the alleged anticompetitive conduct, the coerced execution of annual Student-Athlete Statements, ended no later than June 2016. The court further held that the plaintiffs’ claims for injunctive relief were barred by laches due to their lengthy and unjustified delay in filing suit despite earlier, widely publicized NIL litigation, and that the unjust-enrichment claim failed because it was duplicative of the antitrust claims and, as to certain plaintiffs, independently time-barred and precluded (Chalmers v. National Collegiate Athletic Association, No. 25-1307 (2d Cir. Dec. 15, 2025)).

Background. The sixteen named plaintiffs, former NCAA men’s basketball players whose collegiate careers spanned roughly 1994 to 2015, filed suit against the NCAA and six major conferences, alleging a long-running conspiracy to restrain trade and monopolize the market for images and footage of student-athletes’ past athletic performances. According to the Amended Complaint, the defendants agreed no later than the 1980s to suppress competition by prohibiting compensation to student-athletes for the commercial use of their names, images, and likenesses and by asserting exclusive ownership over such footage.

The plaintiffs alleged that the defendants implemented this scheme by requiring athletes, as a condition of eligibility, to sign annual “Student-Athlete Statements” authorizing the use of their names and images to promote NCAA events, which the NCAA allegedly interpreted as granting athletes a perpetual license to their NIL. The plaintiffs contended that these agreements were coerced, contrary to public policy, and void, and that the defendants used the resulting control over NIL rights to generate substantial commercial revenue through advertising and media-rights deals without compensating the athletes. The court noted that, for purposes of review, it accepted these allegations as true at the pleading stage.

Sherman Act allegations. The court concluded that the plaintiffs’ Sherman Act damages claims were time-barred as a matter of law. Because the plaintiffs’ Sherman Act claims accrued no later than June 2016, they were therefore untimely. The court explained that antitrust claims generally accrue when the allegedly anticompetitive conduct first injures the plaintiff. There, that injury occurred when plaintiffs were required, as a condition of eligibility, to sign Student-Athlete Statements transferring their NIL rights without compensation.

Addressing the continuing-violation doctrine, the court held that later commercial uses of the plaintiffs’ NIL, such as advertising, broadcasts, and media-rights licensing, did not constitute new overt acts but were instead the foreseeable and continuing effects of the original alleged conspiracy. Because those later uses merely implemented the prior transfer of rights, they did not restart the limitations period.

The court next rejected the plaintiffs’ speculative-damages theory, emphasizing that exclusion from the market for one’s own NIL is a classic antitrust injury that is actionable when it occurs, even if the precise magnitude of future damages or the later evolution of NIL markets was uncertain. The fact that NIL may be more valuable today than anticipated did not delay accrual.

Finally, the court held that equitable tolling was unavailable because the plaintiffs failed to allege extraordinary circumstances that prevented them from filing or pursuing their rights in a timely and diligent manner. This fact was particularly true given the existence of earlier, highly publicized NCAA antitrust and NIL litigation asserting similar theories.

Injunctive relief. The court affirmed dismissal of the plaintiffs’ claims for injunctive relief on laches grounds, even though such claims are not subject to the Sherman Act’s statute of limitations. The court explained that laches bars equitable relief where a plaintiff unreasonably delays in bringing suit. Once the analogous statutory limitations period has run, a presumption of laches applies. Here, the Clayton Act’s four-year limitations period was the appropriate analogue, and the plaintiffs’ claims accrued more than four years before they filed suit, triggering that presumption.

The court held that the plaintiffs failed to rebut it, rejecting arguments based on NCAA eligibility rules, athletes’ inability to negotiate NIL rights, and the Supreme Court’s later decision in NCAA v. Alston, 594 U.S. 69 (2021), as insufficient to excuse the delay. The court emphasized that other athletes had brought closely related antitrust and NIL claims against the NCAA years earlier, demonstrating that the suit was feasible long before this action was filed. Accordingly, the court concluded that the plaintiffs’ lengthy and unjustified delay prejudiced defendants and that laches independently barred all requests for injunctive relief.

Unjust enrichment. Finally, the Second Circuit affirmed dismissal of the plaintiffs’ common-law unjust enrichment claim under New York law. The court explained that unjust enrichment is an equitable remedy available only in unusual circumstances and cannot be used as a substitute for statutory causes of action that fully address a plaintiff’s claims. Here, the unjust enrichment claim arose from the same alleged conduct as the antitrust claims, the defendants’ purportedly unlawful acquisition and exploitation of plaintiffs’ NIL rights, and sought the same relief, rendering it duplicative and therefore barred.

The court also rejected the plaintiffs’ attempt to preserve the claim by pointing to the availability of a constructive trust, explaining that a distinct remedy does not salvage an otherwise duplicative cause of action. Finally, the court noted that any independent constructive-trust theory would itself be time-barred, and that equitable remedies cannot be used to enforce legal rights extinguished by statutes of limitations. Accordingly, the court held that the unjust enrichment claim was properly dismissed.

The Case is No. 25-1307.

Judge: Calabresi, G.

Attorneys: Scott Harris (Bryson Harris Suciu & DeMay PLLC) for Mario Chalmers. Rakesh Kilaru (Wilkinson Stekloff LLP) for National Collegiate Athletic Association.

Companies: National Collegiate Athletic Association

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