LITIGATION TRENDS 2025 | 123 T O C E M P E S G A N T I I P C A P R O W C S P O R T C O N T A C T I N T A P P P A T C C L S E C Mountain West athletic conference and San Jose State University in an effort to prevent SJSU’s Blaire Fleming, who the plaintiffs allege is a transgender woman, from competing in the conference championship. The federal judge in Colorado denied the request for a preliminary injunction that would have banned Fleming from competing, finding that the plaintiffs could not establish that their lawsuit was likely to succeed because Title IX protects against discrimination against transgender individuals and that the plaintiffs could have brought their lawsuit earlier. The Tenth Circuit also declined to intervene to ban Fleming, finding that emergency relief was not warranted. The plaintiffs have continued to pursue their lawsuit in the wake of the tournament. President Trump signed an executive order prohibiting transgender girls and women from competing in women’s sports, and the NCAA swiftly amended its own policies to permit only athletes assigned female at birth to compete in women’s competitions. The new policy will likely be subject to challenge, and high school athletes in New Hampshire have already filed suit to challenge this executive order. Professional women’s sports have not been exempt from claims of discrimination and misconduct. In August 2024, Los Angeles Sparks player Dearica Hamby filed a lawsuit against the Women’s National Basketball Association and her former team, the Las Vegas Aces. Hamby alleged that she was subject to discrimination by the Aces after she shared with the team that she was pregnant with her second child. The Aces traded Hamby to the Sparks just months after she had signed a multi-year contract extension, and Hamby alleges that Aces coach Becky Hammon made comments to her accusing her of planning the pregnancy and failing to show appropriate dedication to the team. The WNBA and Aces have disputed Hamby’s version of events and contend that the trade does not constitute unlawful discrimination. In February 2025, the Attorneys General of Washington, D.C., New York, and Illinois announced that they reached a landmark settlement with the National Women’s Soccer League to create a $5 million compensation fund for players who were subject to abuse, harassment, discrimination, and other misconduct by coaches and other management figures. A Joint Investigation, conducted by Weil on behalf of the NWSL Players Association in partnership with counsel for the NWSL, uncovered numerous instances of serious misconduct affecting player safety and well-being in the first ten years of the league’s existence. The Attorney General settlement inscribes the recommendations of the Joint Investigative Team into legally binding obligations on the league and creates a pathway for players who were harmed to collect compensation for the mistreatment they endured, marking a significant win for athletes. NIL and Compensation of College Athletes Compensation of college athletes has remained in the spotlight over the past year as all eyes await a Northern District of California judge’s decision on whether to grant final approval to the landmark $2.78 billion class action settlement over name, image, and likeness rights. Former Arizona State University swimmer Grant House and other college athletes filed several class action lawsuits against the NCAA and the “Power Five” college athletic conferences in 2020. The athletes argued that the NCAA and conferences violated the antitrust laws by preventing college athletes from profiting from the use of their name, image, and likeness through sponsorship and other endorsement deals. The NCAA had long contended that college athletes would forfeit their status as amateurs and be ineligible to compete at the college level if they collected any compensation based on their S T CROSS-PRACTICE FOCUS Sports 122 | Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP
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