Ivy League Beats Back Sports-Scholarship Lawsuit on Appeal

A federal appellate court upheld the Ivy League’s policy prohibiting athletic scholarships, rejecting student-athletes’ legal argument that the ban limited financial aid and caused them to pay higher prices to attend the elite universities.

The student plaintiffs failed to plead a relevant market, a threshold issue in antitrust lawsuits, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said Thursday in an unsigned opinion.

“The alleged Ivy-only markets do not ‘encompass all interchangeable substitute products,’” the ruling said. “Moreover, the alleged Ivy-plus markets for sale of educational services to and purchase of athletic services from AAHA students are insufficiently defined, as the complaint does not ‘include a plausible explanation as to why [these markets] should be limited to exclude possible substitutes.’”

The ruling closes a case brought in 2023 by student-athletes who allege the policy, in which all eight Ivy League schools agreed to refrain from offering athletic scholarships, violated antitrust law. The Ivies, which include Harvard, Cornell, and Yale, instead offer significant financial aid based on economic need.

The appellate court’s ruling also illustrates the pitfalls plaintiffs face when demonstrating the relevant market, which includes all interchangeable products consumers could alternatively turn to for the same purposes.

Establishing a market with specific boundaries allows the courts to judge alleged harm and whether competitors can realistically enter the fray.

Judges Beth Robinson, Dennis Jacobs, and Richard C. Wesley were on the panel.

Scholarship Ban

Lead plaintiff Tamenang Choh sued the eight Ivy League schools—also including Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth, Penn, and Princeton—in March 2023, claiming the universities violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act by not providing athletic scholarships to their Division I athletes.

In 2024, Judge Alvin W. Thompson of the US District Court for the District of Connecticut dismissed the case, saying the student-athlete plaintiffs failed to define the relevant market, making it impossible to evaluate whether the defendant school had the market power necessary to withhold athletic scholarships.

The plaintiffs appealed, and during oral arguments in March, the Second Circuit questioned whether other schools with elite standards, including the University of Michigan, could be reasonable alternatives for students seeking athletic scholarships.

Robinson also questioned how the policy harms students, given that the Ivies turn away far more applicants than they accept.

The defendant schools are represented by firms including WilmerHale. The plaintiffs are represented by Berger Montague.

The case is Choh v. Brown Univ., 2d Cir., No. 24-2826, unpublished 4/2/26.