Laura Reathaford has over two decades of experience in class-action lawsuits, but very little experience in college athletics. That is, until her daughter, Emma, started as a gymnast at Temple.
Then Laura found herself immersed in news regarding the historic House v. NCAA settlement, thanks to parent Facebook groups.
The House settlement paves the way for schools to share revenue with athletes directly, instead of payments coming only from outside sources through name, image, and likeness deals, and allocates approximately $2.8 billion for back pay for athletes over the next 10 years.
It also institutes roster limits, capping the number of athletes allowed to participate in a given sport at schools that opt into the settlement. The terms of the settlement had already become public before it was approved by U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken. That sparked Reathaford’s interest in getting involved.
“I just didn’t understand it,” said Reathaford, who is a partner at the Los Angeles office of Lathrop GPM. “I understand the rules of law, and I was like, ‘How are they rolling out roster limits in a settlement?’ So I dug in, I started reading the pleadings, and I realized that the roster limits were being rolled out in an injunction. I called a couple of the lawyers on the case, and I realized that the process of rolling out the roster limits in an injunction was easily a due process violation, in my opinion, because, fundamentally, injunctions aren’t supposed to harm people.”
An injunction in a class-action lawsuit is a court order compelling participants to, in this case, adopt a specific set of parameters. But in her objection, Reathaford argued that “not only are class members inadequately represented, but it also appears that class counsel has knowingly disregarded their rights in exchange for a large monetary payout.”
Two groups of female athletes already have filed an appeal of the settlement, saying the planned distribution of the $2.8 billion in back pay damages for athletes, of which $1.1 billion is set to go to women athletes, violates Title IX. The plaintiffs include Boston College lacrosse star Charlotte North and Chadds Ford native Kacie Breeding, who ran cross-country at Vanderbilt.
» READ MORE: How will local high school football and basketball recruits be impacted by the House settlement?
After deciding to get involved in the legal defense, Reathaford spoke to a number of former athletes, parents, and coaches to gain perspective on the sports side of the case.
“Many, many, many of them felt like there wasn’t anything that could be done,” Reathaford said. “That’s what broke my heart, and that’s what made me feel like I needed to use my expertise to help, is that I talked to countless people who all said, ‘This is like a large container ship, and it’s too big to move, and nothing we can do is going to make a difference.’ That’s what people told me. … I’m in the business of arguing the law, and I knew there was something we could do. We could object, and that’s why I did it.”
Reathaford ultimately filed an objection representing her daughter, a freshman gymnast at Temple who was hesitant about being involved in a high-profile case like this. But even though she was directly representing just one athlete, Reathaford felt that her arguments spoke for the larger athletic community, which was feeling the impacts of potential roster limits.
She argued in her objection that roster limits created harm and violated due process for the complainants, that the roster limits in the injunction did not match the relief that was sought in the complaint, and that the litigation should be stayed until all appeals had been exhausted.
In the final settlement, Wilken carved out an exception for schools to grandfather in athletes currently on a roster, athletes who were cut this year, and high school recruits who enrolled at a school only to see their roster positions eliminated. But that proposition is voluntary for schools that choose to opt into the settlement, so schools still can eliminate roster positions and not honor those exemptions.
“My idea there is to grandfather in a group of rostered people. There’s not that many,” Wilken told the Associated Press. “It’s not that expensive. It would save a lot of goodwill and angst and unhappiness from a lot of students and their parents, so why not just do it?”
Reathaford said she hoped schools would choose to honor those roster places, but since the judge couldn’t separate roster limits from the settlement at large, she felt called to get involved legally. Notre Dame already has chosen to opt in and grandfather in existing athletes, the first high-major school to do so.
“I’m faced with a legal problem,” Reathaford said. “The legal problem is roster limits. The solution was to take roster limits out of the agreement, right? That was the solution, but the judge was not allowed to do that, so the only other solution after that would have been to deny the settlement.
» READ MORE: Female athletes appeal NCAA settlement, saying it violates Title IX
I really want it to be known that I had no problem with paying athletes. I don’t know if you needed the settlement to do it, but ideally the settlement would have been approved without roster limits, plain or simple, because that was really the most apparent thing causing harm to class members. If they had taken out roster limits, if the roster limits were never in the agreement, I would have never gotten involved in this case.”
