The Department of Education is rescinding weeks-old guidance mandating that NIL (name, image, and likeness) resources from athletic departments and revenue sharing payments be “proportionate” between men’s and women’s sports.
The Biden administration had issued the guidance in its final days, citing Title IX. Republicans quickly signaled they would move to reverse the guidance once President Donald Trump returned to office.
“The NIL guidance, rammed through by the Biden Administration in its final days, is overly burdensome, profoundly unfair, and it goes well beyond what agency guidance is intended to achieve,” the agency said in a statement Wednesday.
The agency took down the NIL guidance Tuesday, but did not confirm the policy had been rescinded until Wednesday morning. It’s one of several Biden-era policies related to Title IX that the Trump administration has almost immediately reversed.
The guidance most notably had said that revenue-sharing payments stemming from the House v. NCAA settlement would have to be proportionate for men’s and women’s sports athletes, as the agency had classified them as a form of financial aid. Under Biden education secretary Miguel Cardona, the department decided to release the guidance before the settlement was approved because a number of athletic departments had announced plans to give the lion share of the payments to football and men’s basketball players, a source had previously told Front Office Sports.
But under new leadership, the agency said didn’t have the legal backing to mandate equitable payments.
“Title IX says nothing about how revenue-generating athletics programs should allocate compensation among student athletes,” acting assistant secretary for civil rights Craig Trainor said in a statement. “The claim that Title IX forces schools and colleges to distribute student-athlete revenues proportionately based on gender equity considerations is sweeping and would require clear legal authority to support it. That does not exist.”
This is a developing news story and will be updated.
