UCLA is facing a lawsuit from the nonprofit news organization CalMatters after the university refused to disclose how much money it pays student athletes for the use of their name, image and likeness — payments that ultimately draw on tuition, student fees and other public funds.
The lawsuit, filed Monday, comes after nearly a year of back-and-forth between CalMatters reporters and UCLA officials over public records requests. It marks an escalation in a broader effort by the news organization to shed light on how California’s public universities are spending money in the post-2021 era of college athlete compensation.
California became one of the first states to let college athletes profit from their name, image and likeness five years ago. Since then, top-tier players — including some at UCLA and UC Berkeley — have earned hundreds of thousands of dollars, in part through deals with their own universities, which pay them to appear in promotional campaigns and marketing materials.
But when CalMatters asked more than a dozen University of California and California State University campuses last fall for records detailing those payments to Division I athletes, the response was uneven. Several schools handed over little or nothing. UCLA and UC Berkeley — home to the two most financially robust athletic programs among the state’s public universities — initially denied the requests outright, claiming disclosure would put their athletes at a competitive disadvantage or infringe on student privacy protections under federal education law.
Both schools eventually turned over some records, but neither would identify which athletes or teams received the payments, even though other campuses had been more transparent. UCLA and UC Berkeley have also argued that the money funding these payments doesn’t come from taxpayers — an assertion that higher education finance experts say is difficult to substantiate. In reality, both UC and CSU campuses routinely cover gaps in their athletic department budgets using tuition revenue, student fees or general fund dollars, all of which include public money.
Frustrated by the lack of transparency, CalMatters filed its lawsuit against UCLA this week, arguing that when a public institution hands out public resources, the public has a right to know who is receiving that money, how much, and under what terms. The organization says it plans to take similar legal action against UC Berkeley.
The case adds to a growing list of questions surrounding the intersection of college sports, student compensation and public accountability in California — an issue likely to draw continued scrutiny as name, image and likeness deals become an increasingly significant part of university athletic budgets statewide.
Original source: CalMatters
