Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, WHITE HOUSE NEWS—Newest Executive Order tackles college sports, (Jul 25, 2025)

By Brandi O. Brown, J.D.

Among other things, it criticizes “pay-for-play payments” and calls for guardrails.

In a new Executive Order, President Trump purports to try to “sav[e] college sports” by “protecting and expanding women’s and non-revenue sports and prohibiting third party pay-for-play payments,” “clarifying the status of collegiate athletes,” establishing legal protections for college athletics from lawsuits and being “unreasonably challenged under antitrust and other legal theories.”

College sports are a vital American institution, the EO contends, offering educational, leadership, and economic benefits to over 500,000 student-athletes through billions of dollars of scholarships yearly. However, the order contends that recent legal changes have destabilized the system that had been in place, removing limits on athlete compensation and transfers and leading to bidding wars and resource imbalances.

“This not only reduces competition and parity by creating an oligarchy of teams that can simply buy the best players—including the best players from less-wealthy programs at the end of each season—but the imperative that university donors must devote ever-escalating resources to compete in the revenue-generating sports like football and basketball siphons away the resources necessary to support the panoply of non-revenue sports.”

Guardrails. Therefore, the order calls for national guardrails that it believes will restore fairness, preserve scholarships, and prevent college sports from becoming professionalized. “Absent guardrails to stop the madness and ensure a reasonable, balanced use of resources across collegiate athletic programs that preserves their educational and developmental benefits, many college sports will soon cease to exist.”

Title IX and women’s sports. On the surface, the order appears to reinforce the importance of Title IX compliance by explicitly calling for the preservation and expansion of women’s sports. It announces that it is the executive branch’s policy to ensure that institutions maintain or increase scholarship and roster opportunities for those sports, particularly for athletic departments with revenues exceeding $50 million. It also differentiates collegiate athletic departments with greater than $125 million in revenue.

It instructs the Secretary of Education, in consultation with the Attorney General, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the Secretary of Education, and the Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, to develop a plan to advance the order’s related policies “through all available and appropriate regulatory, enforcement, and litigation mechanisms, including Federal funding decisions, enforcement of Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, prohibiting unconstitutional actions by States to regulate interstate commerce, and enforcement of other constitutional and statutory protections, and by working with the Congress and State governments, as appropriate.” It mandates that revenue-sharing models between universities and athletes must not undermine opportunities for women or non-revenue sports.

Employment status of student-athletes. However, the order also directs the Secretary of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to “clarify[]” the employment status of student-athletes, through “guidance, rules, or other appropriate actions.” The order expresses the Trump administration’s desire to prohibit third-party pay-for-play schemes facilitated by universities, while still allowing athletes to receive compensation for brand endorsements. It calls for legal protections to shield college athletics from antitrust and other lawsuits that the administration believes could destabilize the system.

Olympics. Finally, the EO touches on development of the United States Olympic Team, instructing the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and the Director of the White House Office of Public Liaison to consult the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee and other appropriate American athletic organizations about “safeguarding the integral role and competitive advantage that American collegiate athletics provide in developing athletes to represent our Nation in international athletic competitions.”

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