Student-Athletes as Employees Spells Legal Stressors for Schools

Despite missing out on March Madness with a 6-21 record, the Dartmouth College men’s basketball team created a little madness on their own when they successfully joined the Service Employees International Union Local 560.

This unprecedented maneuver has sent shockwaves across the National Collegiate Athletic Association, which has already been rattled due to new regulations on name, image and likeness (“NIL”). It came just one month after Laura Sacks, a Regional Director at the National Labor Relations Board, issued a ruling (“Sacks ruling”) specifying that the Dartmouth players were “employees” of the New Hampshire-based institution and thus entitled ...