The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has filed a complaint against USC, the Pac-12 and the NCAA, alleging that the parties have misclassified athletes as "student-athletes" rather than employees.
The NLRB called all three entities joint employers of college athletes and said the misclassification intentionally deprives athletes of their rights under the National Labor Relations Act.
The athletes involved are football players as well as players from the men's and women's basketball teams.
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"The conduct of USC, the Pac-12 Conference and the NCAA, as joint employers, deprives their players of their statutory right to organize and to join together to improve their working and playing conditions, if they wish to do so," NLRB general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo said in a statement via the L.A. Times. "Our aim is to ensure that these players, as workers like any other, can fully and freely exercise their rights."
Abruzzo will aim for the parties to "reclassify the Players as employees rather than as ‘student-athletes’ in their files, including, but not limited to, their handbooks and rules, and notify all current Players that they have done so," according to the complaint via USA Today.
Last year, the NLRB filed an unfair labor practice charge against the NCAA, the conference and the school. The suit accuses the parties of misclassifying college players as "student-athletes" as well as other violations.
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The NLRB argues that the NCAA, conference and school have full control over the athletes' working conditions.
All three parties could be subject to financial punishments.
The parties must respond to the complaint by June 1, and a hearing has been set for Nov. 7.
The Supreme Court ruled unanimously in 2021 that college athletes can profit off their name, image and likeness.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
