Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/20-512_gfbh.pdf
Page Number: 43

Cite as:  594 U. S. ____ (2021) 

3 

KAVANAUGH, J., concurring 

remaining compensation rules can pass muster under ordi-
nary rule of reason scrutiny.  Under the rule of reason, the 
NCAA must supply a legally valid procompetitive justifica-
tion for its remaining compensation rules.  As I see it, how-
ever, the NCAA may lack such a justification. 

The NCAA acknowledges that it controls the market for
college athletes.  The NCAA concedes that its compensation
rules set the price of student athlete labor at a below-mar-
ket rate.  And the NCAA recognizes that student athletes
currently have no meaningful ability to negotiate with the
NCAA over the compensation rules.

The  NCAA  nonetheless  asserts  that  its  compensation
rules are procompetitive because those rules help define the
product of college sports.  Specifically, the NCAA says that 
colleges may decline to pay student athletes because the de-
fining feature of college sports, according to the NCAA, is
that the student athletes are not paid. 

In my view, that argument is circular and unpersuasive. 
The  NCAA  couches  its  arguments  for  not  paying  student 
athletes in innocuous labels.  But the labels cannot disguise
the reality: The NCAA’s business model would be flatly il-
legal in almost any other industry in America.  All of the 
restaurants in a region cannot come together to cut cooks’ 
wages on the theory that “customers prefer” to eat food from
low-paid cooks.  Law firms cannot conspire to cabin lawyers’ 
salaries in the name of providing legal services out of a “love 
of the law.”  Hospitals cannot agree to cap nurses’ income 
in order to create a “purer” form of helping the sick.  News 
organizations cannot join forces to curtail pay to reporters
to  preserve  a  “tradition”  of  public-minded  journalism.
Movie  studios  cannot  collude  to  slash  benefits  to  camera 
crews to kindle a “spirit of amateurism” in Hollywood. 

Price-fixing  labor  is  price-fixing  labor.    And  price-fixing
labor is ordinarily a textbook antitrust problem because it 
extinguishes the free market in which individuals can oth-
erwise  obtain  fair  compensation  for  their  work.  See,  e.g.,