A federal appeals court on Thursday refused to rule out the possibility of college athletes being considered employees of their schools under minimum-wage law, as the NCAA had requested, but a three-judge panel sent the case back to a lower court for further consideration of the issue.
In an opinion that comes nearly a year and a half after the case was argued before the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge L. Felipe Restrepo wrote:
“The issue raised by this interlocutory appeal is not whether the athletes before us are actually owed the protections of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), but rather, whether college athletes, by nature of their so-called amateur status, are precluded from ever bringing an FLSA claim. Our answer to this question is no.”
