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22  NATIONAL COLLEGIATE ATHLETIC ASSN. v. ALSTON 

Opinion of the Court 

its  member  schools  are  not  “commercial  enterprises”  and 
instead oversee intercollegiate athletics “as an integral part
of  the  undergraduate  experience.”    Brief  for  Petitioner  in 
No. 20–512, at 31.  The NCAA represents that it seeks to
“maintain amateurism in college sports as part of serving 
[the]  societally  important  non-commercial  objective”  of
“higher education.”  Id., at 3. 

Here again, however, there may be less of a dispute than
meets  the  eye.  The  NCAA  does  not  contest  that  its  re-
straints affect interstate trade and commerce and are thus 
subject to the Sherman Act.  See D. Ct. Op., at 1066.  The 
NCAA acknowledges that this Court already analyzed (and 
struck  down)  some  of  its  restraints  as  anticompetitive  in 
Board of Regents.  And it admits, as it must, that the Court 
did all this only after observing that the Sherman Act had
already been applied to other nonprofit organizations—and 
that  “the  economic  significance  of  the  NCAA’s  nonprofit
character is questionable at best” given that “the NCAA and
its member institutions are in fact organized to maximize 
revenues.”  468 U. S., at 100–101, n. 22.  Nor, on the other 
side of the equation, does anyone contest that the status of 
the NCAA’s members as schools and the status of student-
athletes as students may be relevant in assessing consumer 
demand as part of a rule of reason review. 

With  this  much  agreed  it  is  unclear  exactly  what  the 
NCAA seeks.  To the extent it means to propose a sort of
judicially  ordained  immunity  from  the  terms  of  the  Sher-
man Act for its restraints of trade—that we should overlook 
its restrictions because they happen to fall at the intersec-
tion  of  higher  education,  sports,  and  money—we  cannot 
agree.  This Court has regularly refused materially identi-
cal  requests  from  litigants  seeking  special  dispensation
from the Sherman Act on the ground that their restraints
of trade serve uniquely important social objectives beyond
enhancing competition.