LSU blinked in the face of conference pressure and didn’t roster two ex-NFL players for its season opener against Clemson. But the SEC is not giving up its courtroom fight against its most controversial member.
On Tuesday, the SEC filed an amended complaint in its federal lawsuit against LSU, with the aim of establishing the legal authority to expel LSU from the conference.
The filing signals not just a willingness for the conference to continue its legal battle against LSU and its football coach Lane Kiffin, but an escalation.
Documents in the new filing say that the SEC will meet on Thursday to vote on whether to expel LSU from the conference. The SEC bylaws require a two-thirds majority of conference “CEOs,” or university presidents, to do so. The lawsuit is seeking a temporary restraining order to prevent LSU officials taking action “to block or interfere with the meeting scheduled for September 10th or with the exercise by the Conference and its member institutions of their First Amendment rights.”
The amended complaint added members of the LSU Board of Supervisors as defendants as well as Louisiana attorney general Liz Murrill, who has been outspoken in defending the school.
In a statement to Front Office Sports, an SEC spokesperson said the court filing “is necessary to defend that right and preserve the Conference’s ability to govern competition among its members”
“The SEC and its member universities have the right to establish, through agreed-upon governance procedures, the rules under which they voluntarily compete and to expect those rules to be followed,” the spokesperson said. “A commitment to those rules, and to the core principles of the Southeastern Conference, is an essential element of SEC membership.”
Neither LSU nor Murrill’s office immediately responded to requests for comment.
This is a developing story.
