A second group of female college athletes has filed an objection to the House v. NCAA settlement, claiming that the terms violate Title IX.
Three women’s lacrosse players, Charlotte North (Boston College/Duke), Sarah Brooke Baker (UNC/Vanderbilt) and Katherine McCabe Ernst (Vanderbilt), filed the objection along with Georgia tennis player Mai Nirundorn.
North is a two-time winner of the Tewaaraton Award, which goes to the best male and female college lacrosse players in the country each season.
Here’s the notice of appeal for the second appeal of final approval of the House settlement on Title IX grounds. https://t.co/m4BhoxpZTd pic.twitter.com/tEk1vQrAFO
— Mit Winter (@WinterSportsLaw) June 16, 2025
The female athletes are represented by sports law attorney Leigh Ernst Friestedt, who works for the firm EQUITY IX, LLC, who work on Title IX, gender equity, and NIL issues.
This is the second Title IX appeal against the settlement in the last week, as a group of eight female athletes previously filed one arguing that women will not receive their fair share of the $2.8 billion in backpay damages that will be paid to former student-athletes who were unable to make money based on their name, image and likeness (NIL) since 2016.
North, Brooke Baker, McCabe Ernst and Nirundorn all previously filed objection letters to Judge Claudia Wilken, which gave them the ability to file an official appeal.
Judge Wilken granted final approval to the landmark settlement in early June, meaning beginning next season, schools will be able to pay athletes directly under the new revenue-sharing cap, ending the NCAA’s amateurism model, while confirming that $2.8 billion will be awarded to former student-athletes in backpay damages dating back to 2016.
Wilken deliberately left the case open for appeals relating to Title IX, as the question of whether or not Title IX will apply to the revenue-sharing portion of the settlement lingers as well.
Approximately 90% of the $2.8 billion in backpay is expected to be paid to male football and basketball student-athletes, while female basketball players will receive five percent and all other athletes will split the remaining five percent.
Both appeals argue that the settlement failed to properly calculate how the $2.8 billion should be distributed and that the proposed allocation of the funds violates Title IX.
“This significant disparity constitutes a violation of Title IX,” Friestedt told CBS Sports. “Charlotte, Mai, Katherine and Brooke look forward to the opportunity to appeal this decision with the 9th Circuit on behalf of millions of female student-athletes.”
The eventual elimination of all non revenue sports @ “NCAA” level. Will evolve into college club activity as to eliminate costs and avoid complications of Title IX. This will put more emphasis on USA swimming/USOC to develop and maintain our top tier athletes. Unfortunate for those high school athletes who will miss out on a true collegiate experience.
Very unlikely this will help swimming all that much. If anything, it will hurt by creating an additional class or two between NCAA women’s basketball and the “other sports”. I read the letters by the lacrosse women. It seems very plausible to me that sports like D1 women’s volleyball, D1 mens and womens lacrosse, and maybe D1 soccer, have a claim to some equipment sales and positive attention for the university. Not as much as fball/bball or even women’s bball perhaps, but clearly above something like track or swimming.
Ray Looze mentioned something like this at CSCAA conference last year. Not in a disparaging way at all, he said that swimming is currently in the 3rd tier behind the revenue-generating… Read more »
Here is the clip of Looze discussing swimming being a 3rd tier sport in NCAA and hopefully the women’s swimmers can boost that and get paid. https://youtu.be/mrlmDyB6_ic
I missed this along the way. How do they determine what each school is required to pay in order to accumulate the $2.8 Billion?