By Kate Ragusa
On February 28, 2025, United States District Judge Tilman E. Self III denied Dylan Goldstein’s motion for a preliminary injunction against the NCAA regarding his eligibility to play Division I collegiate baseball for the University of Georgia in the 2025-2026 season. Goldstein’s complaint arose from NCAA Bylaws regarding the Five-Year Rule for competitive eligibility, which states that, regardless of playing time at a junior college, a student-athlete must complete all participation within five years from enrollment at an institution. Goldstein’s collegiate career began at Chipola College in 2020, a junior college in Florida, before the season was canceled and exempted from his years of eligibility. Five years later, he sought eligibility for a fifth season, after playing two seasons of Division I baseball with Florida Atlantic University before joining the Bulldogs.
In December 2024, the NCAA Board of Directors issued a waiver that provided “certain former-JUCO athletes with a fourth year of Division I eligibility.” This waiver extended only to those who had used their eligibility in the 2025 season, so Goldstein, who completed his fourth year in the 2024 season, was not covered. Using this exclusion as the basis for his lawsuit, Goldstein’s official complaint argued that the waiver was anticompetitive in nature and that the bylaws constituted an “unlawful restriction on the market for Division I athletics” in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The Act states that “[e]very contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal.”
The lawsuit was filed on February 18, 2025, and Goldstein filed a motion for a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) to enjoin the NCAA from enforcing the bylaws, allowing him to participate in the 2025 season. Due to the rapidly approaching season and the sensitivity of the issue, the court held a hearing on the motion the next day, February 19. The motion for a TRO was orally denied, but recognizing the urgency of the matter, the court emphasized it would be as flexible as possible in scheduling a hearing for a preliminary injunction. Thus, after Goldstein and the NCAA reached an agreement, the hearing was set for 5:00 P.M. on February 25, six days later.
The court ultimately denied Goldstein’s motion for a preliminary injunction for two reasons: the bylaws he challenged were not subject to the Sherman Antitrust Act due to their noncommercial nature, and even if they had been, Goldstein failed to provide sufficient evidence for the court to analyze for its decision. In the Eleventh Circuit, injunctive relief is granted only if the moving party establishes “(1) a substantial likelihood of success on the merits; (2) a substantial threat of irreparable injury; (3) that the threatened injury to the plaintiff outweighs the potential harm to the defendant; and (4) that the injunction will not disserve the public interest.” The court found that Goldstein did not satisfy the first prong of the test because he did not demonstrate a substantial likelihood of success on the merits.
For bylaws to be subject to antitrust scrutiny under the Sherman Antitrust Act, they must be commercial in nature. Goldstein attempted to rely on NCAA v. Alston, but the court distinguished Alston, noting that compensation of student-athletes is more readily considered commercial, whereas eligibility rules are less so—even in light of Goldstein’s argument that another year of collegiate eligibility would create “significant opportunities to capitalize off his NIL.” The Supreme Court clarified that its decision in Alston concerned “only a narrow subset of the NCAA’s compensation rules,” and the Georgia District Court emphasized that eligibility bylaws fell outside Alston’s scope.
Second, even if the bylaws were subject to antitrust scrutiny, Goldstein failed to prove that they had a substantial anticompetitive effect. The “rule-of-reason” analysis, used to determine whether a restraint is undue under the Sherman Antitrust Act, involves three steps. First, the moving party “has the initial burden to prove that the challenged restraint has a substantial anticompetitive effect.” If successful, the burden shifts to the opposing party to “show a procompetitive rationale for the restraint.” If the opposing party establishes this, the burden returns to the moving party to “demonstrate that the procompetitive efficiencies could be reasonably achieved through less anticompetitive means.”
At the February 25 hearing, Goldstein was unable to meet his initial burden of proving the anticompetitive effect of the bylaws on the market because he failed to define the relevant market. The court noted that defining the market almost always requires expert assessment, which Goldstein lacked. Due to the short turnaround between hearings, Goldstein had only submitted his complaint, his own declaration, and a declaration from his agent. Without expert testimony to define the market, Goldstein failed to establish the negative effect of the bylaws on competition in the market and could not meet his burden.
The court concluded its opinion with the two reasons Goldstein’s motion for a preliminary injunction was denied: “Goldstein does not have a likelihood of success on the merits of an antitrust claim, and he fails to meet his burden for what is widely known as such an extraordinary and drastic remedy.” Consequently, Dylan Goldstein was not covered by the NCAA’s 2024 waiver and was therefore ineligible to play a second season with the Georgia Bulldogs in the spring of 2025.
Kate is a rising 2L at Tulane University Law School. She serves as the Chief Marketing Officer of the Tulane Sports Law Society Executive Board, as well as Tulane’s Junior Managing Editor for the SLA Newsletter. She is currently spending her summer as a Summer Associate at Sidley Austin LLP in Houston. Kate can be reached at kragusa@tulane.edu
