CLASP
The Center for Law and Social Policy
By Christian Collins
The Student Compensation and Opportunity through Rights and Endorsements (SCORE) Act, H.R.4312, is a prominent example of the dangers in crafting broad legislation based on outliers instead of on the common experiences of students. Though the SCORE Act is a dedicated effort from Congress to punish college athletes for seeking the ability to be compensated for the labor they provide, this is not the first bill this year to directly target college athletes. H.R. 1, the reconciliation bill passed in July, includes a provision that removes Pell grant eligibility for any student receiving non-federal aid that equals or exceeds their full cost of attendance. This means that starting in fall 2026, every full-ride scholarship athlete across all college sports will be ineligible for Pell Grants:
“(6) Exclusion.—Beginning on July 1, 2026, and not withstanding this subsection or subsection (b), a student shall not be eligible for a Federal Pell Grant under subsection (b) during any period for which the student receives grant aid from non-Federal sources, including States, institutions of higher education, or private sources, in an amount that equals or exceeds the student’s cost of attendance for such period.”
The SCORE Act and Reconciliation Bill Limit College Affordability Pathways for College Athletes
For schools that opted into the House v. NCAA settlement, NCAA Division 1 level sports are now all treated as “equivalency” sports regarding the financial aid offers given to athletes. The term “equivalency” means that scholarships are allowed to be divided into partial scholarships split among multiple athletes. Prior to the settlement, six sports were deemed as “headcount” sports where only full-ride scholarships could be allocated: football and basketball for men’s programs, and basketball, volleyball, tennis, and gymnastics for women’s programs.
Fifty-four institutions decided not to opt into the House settlement, which means that the old system of “headcount” versus “equivalency” sports remains in place. But beginning next year, every football and men’s basketball player attending one of those 54 institutions will lose Pell Grant eligibility. For the nation’s remaining 311 Division 1 institutions, as of fall 2026, their athletes will have to choose between receiving a full athletic scholarship or having access to Pell Grants.
The Impact of this Pell Grant Provision Will Disproportionately Affect Black Men
Access to Pell Grants, even for students who receive full scholarships through athletics, is critical for students with lower incomes to fund out-of-classroom expenses not covered by scholarships, including transportation, child care, and classroom supplies.
This provision is almost surgically targeted at Black male students who participate in athletics due to the rates that they qualify for Pell Grants compared to other demographics. From the latest National Postsecondary Student Aid Survey data, nearly 69 percent of Black male college athletes on athletic scholarship received Pell Grant awards, compared to 53 percent of all Black male students and just 36 percent of all college athletes. Football and men’s basketball, the former two “headcount” sports which have the historical precedent of athletes being offered full-ride scholarships to participate in those programs and are the highest-revenue generating programs among all college sports, are represented by majorities and pluralities, respectively, of Black men.
In their rush to guarantee the ability of institutions and third parties to profit off the labor of college athletes without consequence, the authors of the SCORE Act are sandwiching primarily Black male students into a cost-of-attendance trap. These athletes will now be forced to use revenue share payments and name, image, and likeness (NIL) deals to make up for losing Pell Grant dollars. Revenue share payments are currently capped, with schools also refusing to share publicly how much athletes are receiving from these payments or if they’re receiving payments at all. NIL deals are rare for most athletes and purposefully being delayed by institutions via the College Sports Commission, so even if athletes successfully land a deal, there’s no guarantee they get the money in a timely manner.
Though the average disclosed NIL deal for Division 1 football and men’s basketball players through 2025 is $6,112, nearly 66 percent of all NIL deals for these athletes are worth $1,000 or less, which is nowhere near what athletes stand to lose in Pell Grant awards.
Fixing College Athletics Requires Giving and Taking, But Congress Is Only Taking from Students
The flawed logic behind the Pell Grant reconciliation provision—that athletes are now able to earn enough money through NIL deals and revenue sharing payments to not need Pell Grants—is the exact same flawed logic behind the SCORE Act provisions that clamp down on total compensation and federal labor protections of college athletes.
Federal policymakers have two immediate pathways to reverse their present course of forcing college athletes to seek rare third-party generosity to afford cost-of-living expenses. One pathway can be exercised by the executive branch, which should provide clarity on how the Pell Grant changes within H.R. 1 will be enforced by using the upcoming negotiated rulemaking sessions led by the Accountability in Higher Education and Access through Demand-driven Workforce Pell Committee. The other is for Congress to craft legislation that truly supports athletes, which requires centering these students in the policy creation process to understand their actual circumstances.
By Christian Collins
The Student Compensation and Opportunity through Rights and Endorsements (SCORE) Act, H.R.4312, is the culmination of a multiyear effort from colleges and universities to preserve an outdated and unjust economic system. Following the landmark House v. NCAA federal antitrust settlement, which brought roughly $2.8 billion in back damages to former college athletes from uncompensated labor and established the first revenue-sharing model for institutions to directly pay students for athletic labor, Congress is attempting to permanently wipe out those hard-fought gains.
The SCORE Act conflates two distinct issues: the inequitable state of college athletics and the financial insecurity of institutions due to federal funding cuts. Taking rights away from students won’t solve either issue. This legislation is just an attempt by Congress to pass the blame from its own inaction onto students who are only seeking the right to be paid for their labor.
Seeking to comprehensively address inequities in college athletics is no excuse to codify the greed of institutions into federal law. The SCORE Act doesn’t create a more equitable college athletics system; rather, in its current form, it contains multiple provisions that directly harm college students by preserving the ability of institutions to profit off them without fair compensation, including:
- An antitrust exemption protecting institutions from liability for collusion to limit earnings of college athletes and their ability to freely transfer schools.
- Permanently barring college athletes from employment status, which prevents students from being protected by federal employment law.
- Preserving the ability of institutions to charge students athletic fees. This is a common practice; Division 1 Football Bowl Subdivision schools alone raised $668.5 million this way in 2023. The bill bans this practice only for institutions that earn more than $50 million in annual media revenue from athletics, which applies to less than 1 percent of all Title IV colleges and universities across the country.
- Pre-emption of existing state laws related to college athletics, which is a likely constitutional overreach by Congress going beyond its current legal jurisdiction over public education.
The SCORE Act’s Narrow Perspective Will Have Widespread Consequences
The bill’s primary objective is to deny college athletes basic federal labor protections and codify severe economic restrictions on current and future athletes that no other students on campus face. From smaller private schools that utilize athletic programs as an enrollment tool to large public universities that use athletics as public marketing and donor engagement opportunities, the labor of athletes extends far beyond their time on the field. Instead of providing additional protection for students from harassment and abuse brought by gamblers, preventing states from relying on gambling taxes to make up for larger federal funding shortfalls and fund athletic programs, and how institutions often spend more on coaching and staff compensation than on all financial aid for athletes, Congress has used the SCORE Act to prioritize allowing schools to pay their own students as little as legally possible.
Concerningly, the authors of this bill failed to address the racialized impact it would have on marginalized students, especially Black men. The SCORE Act undercuts the notion that college athletics are a primary driver of socioeconomic mobility for young Black men, who represent majorities and pluralities of athletes competing in the highest revenue-generating sports (football and men’s basketball) across Divisions 1 and 2. This bill would codify academic institutions being able to reap billions in annual revenue from the uncompensated labor of Black students through a “plantation” economy, but not having to support their academic and professional development.
The SCORE Act Would Protect Institutions from the Consequences of Exploiting Their Own Students
Limiting the income potential of, and labor protections for, student workers on college campuses only signals that institutions care more about what money they can extract from students versus how they can best educate students. Institutions have made no complaints over the rampant revenue generation and athletics-related spending that they’ve embarked on for years, but are now begging Congress to stop athletes from receiving a fair share.
The SCORE Act is an attempt by a small subset of universities to preserve an inequitable economic system due to pure greed. Members of Congress should oppose this legislation and instead work to advance policies that support students by crafting legislation that includes the following provisions:
- Guaranteed collective bargaining rights and employment status for college athletes.
- Federally guaranteed health and safety standards for athletes regardless of competition level.
- Prohibiting public institutions from entering financial relationships with gambling companies, along with increased protections for students from being harassed by gamblers.
- Increasing federal spending on higher education so that states aren’t incentivized to promote sports gambling for fiscal sustainability.
Other CLASP publications on the exploitation of Black male college athletes include:
Submitted November 28, 2025
The Center for Law and Social Policy submits this comment opposing in the strongest possible terms the October 30, 2025 Interim Final Rule (“2025 IFR”) eliminating automatic extensions of Employment Authorization Documents (“EADs”). The 2025 IFR unlawfully reverses DHS’s nearly decade-long policy choice of providing automatic EAD extensions; ignores ongoing adjudication delays and economic evidence; disregards reliance interests that DHS itself recognized less than a year ago; rejects feasible alternatives; and relies solely on an unsupported security rationale all while unlawfully bypassing notice-and-comment. The result is a rule that will destabilize the workforce, disrupt employer operations, and inflict severe harm on workers and their families solely due to government processing delays. DHS must withdraw the IFR in full.
By Christian Collins
In this op-ed for Inside Higher Ed, Christian describes how student loan forgiveness is being used as a tool by the administration to recruit Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Among other things, he notes, “By passing the reconciliation bill that nearly tripled ICE’s budget while restricting Pell Grant eligibility for some students and cutting back basic needs programs like food stamps and Medicaid, congressional leaders have identified themselves as active participants in this strategy.”
By Lulit Shewan
In July, the Department of Labor (DOL) introduced an extensive plan to reduce regulations affecting various labor protections, including important workplace safety regulations. Officials presented the initiative as an effort to “put American workers and job creators first,” a misleading interpretation of policies that enable employers to jeopardize their workers’ well-being and complicate the process for employees to seek accountability.
This movement toward deregulation indicates a readiness to compromise the health and lives of workers, especially Black and brown workers who are overrepresented in the blue-collar industries that would be impacted, in pursuit of corporate profits. If approved, the far-reaching changes will adversely affect working conditions at construction sites and mines and limit the ability of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to penalize employers if workers are injured or killed while performing inherently dangerous activities.
Loosening regulations that ensure health, safety, and dignity in the workplace will not eliminate outdated or unnecessary regulations. Rather, this plan undermines the fundamental right of employees to have safe and respectable working environments; indicates to employers that taking shortcuts is permissible and that the government will ignore the exploitation and subsequent dismissal of worker safety; and seems aimed at reducing expenses for employers by transferring risks and dangers onto employees.
The Importance of Regulatory Rules
Agencies draft federal rules to implement the specifics of legislation enacted by Congress. Regulations ensure that laws are properly implemented and administered so that workers have meaningful protections. This is especially important given that current labor law already falls short in creating adequate job quality standards. Trump’s deregulatory agenda requires agencies to identify ten regulations to repeal before enacting a single new regulation. This paradigm upholds the false notion that regulations hinder economic growth and burden employers.
Over half of the rules that Trump’s DOL wants to repeal are intended to make workplaces safer for employees. Since the establishment of OSHA, more than 712,000 workers have been saved under the OSH Act, and jobsite deaths have decreased by almost two-thirds, even as the size of the U.S. workforce has more than doubled. OSHA is the only agency that enforces and preserves worker health and safety.
Health and Safety Deregulations
Within this deregulation campaign, DOL intends to revise reporting thresholds and training mandates, and change enforcement priorities and inspection frequencies at OSHA. The twenty-five proposed rules all put worker safety protections at risk. Four of the most concerning are:
General Duty Clause
A proposed change that would limit OSHA’s ability to cite employers under the General Duty Clause for hazards deemed “inherent and inseparable” from certain professions in high-risk sectors is particularly harmful. Employers already have autonomy over what is “essential” to a job and how to establish workplace standards, especially in nonunionized settings. That makes the General Duty Clause one of OSHA’s most effective enforcement weapons to address the countless dangers workers may face, giving it the authority to address significant workplace dangers that are not covered by more focused rules. Without the clause’s vital safeguards, OSHA would be significantly less equipped to respond to developing risks or hold employers accountable for recognized hazards that lie within gaps in current regulations.
COVID-19 Reporting
The administration also intends to terminate OSHA’s independent system for monitoring COVID-related deaths and hospitalizations, as well as explicitly remove COVID-19 emergency reporting guidelines for health care settings from federal regulations. This change would mean that employers must only report the usual criteria for workplace risks, under which companies are only required to record hospitalizations if they occur within 24 hours of the job exposure. Since most COVID-related hospitalizations occur days or even weeks after exposure, returning to OSHA’s baseline reporting standard would essentially remove many workplace-related COVID cases from the record. The elimination of separate COVID-19 reporting also signals a concerning de-prioritization of reporting on the exposure of contagious illnesses, even in medical facilities where reporting is crucial for maintaining the safety of those settings, safeguarding access to care, and averting outbreaks that disproportionately affect those who are already at risk. If implemented, this change will harm workers in nursing facilities, assisted living communities, and home health agencies, as well as in other health care environments such as hospitals and medical offices.
Musculoskeletal Injury Reporting
Another proposal would remove the need for employers to disclose musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs), even though these injuries are among the most prevalent and expensive workplace hazards. MSDs are injuries brought on by or made worse by heavy lifting, repetitive motions, poor workplace ergonomics, and other physically taxing jobs that are often not adequately protected by existing OSHA standards. Notably, OSHA uses the General Duty Clause to issue citations to employers for dangerous situations because it does not currently have a specific ergonomics guideline. MSDs are already common in transportation and warehouse jobs, where workers are frequently at risk due to dangerous work practices and inadequate equipment. Eliminating reporting will result in an even higher rate of injury for workers.
Respiratory Protection Standards
The government has significantly deregulated medical examination standards intended to safeguard respiratory protection standards. The latest proposed modifications eliminate the need for a medical examination in the respiratory protection standard for filtering facepiece respirators and loose-fitting powered air-purifying respirators. The changes would also relax the criteria for respirators in jobs involving toxic and hazardous compounds. This essential regulation codifies the steps facilities need to take to have an appropriate respiratory protection program in environmentally hazardous work environments like construction, mining, and health care.
Conclusion
The DOL says this aggressive deregulatory push will “unleash prosperity” for American workers, but the Trump Administration’s economic policy aims are clear: lower employer costs, decrease taxes for the wealthy, and eliminate government and corporate accountability to workers and their families, particularly in neighborhoods with low incomes. Health and safety standards are in place to prevent employers from cutting costs at the expense of their employees and communities. Responsible regulations impose consequences on dangerous business activities; otherwise, companies would have little motivation to prioritize worker and public safety before profit.
By Ela Jalil
(EXCERPT)
Christian Collins, a policy analyst for the Center for Law and Social Policy who focuses on post-secondary education, said that parking citations are just another financial barrier for students to overcome to get a degree.
Collins also noted that punishments like a hold on students’ accounts have a larger impact on low-income students who struggle to pay off their tickets, and warned against inequitable policies.
“If it’s coming at the cost of certain students effectively becoming barred from participating in education, educational opportunities and campus in general, then is it really the best design policy that you can offer?” Collins
By Lindsay Lee Wallace
(EXCERPT)
“The political coercion is a form of threat under the [National Labor Relations Act],” said Lorena Roque, interim director of education, labor, and worker justice at the Center for Law and Social Policy. “Being forced to do any of these things is an unfair labor practice, and then when you throw the political element in there, I think the [National Labor Relations Board] would be very upset.”
Read article here.
By Christian Collins
The Trump Administration is advancing polices that solely benefit its anti-immigrant, military state agenda. A clear example is the administration’s offering of taxpayer-funded loan forgiveness to incentivize more applicants for openings at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Simultaneously, the Trump Administration seeks to strip loan forgiveness pathways from educational institutions, non-profit organizations, government employees, and others who are deemed obstructors to Trump’s political goals.
>> Read the full fact sheet here
By Diane Harris and Nat Baldino
When workers in the United States face a serious illness or need to care for a loved one, they often have nowhere to turn. Without a national paid family and medical leave program, many are forced to choose between their financial stability and their health and well-being. The Family and Medical Insurance Leave (FAMILY) Act seeks to change this by building on the successes of state programs to create a comprehensive and inclusive federal paid leave policy that meets the needs of workers. We urge Members of Congress to support the FAMILY Act, which would improve the health of workers, reduce poverty for families, increase the U.S. GDP by $775 billion each year, and generate cost savings for employers.
>> Read the full fact sheet here
By Monica Potts
(EXCERPT)
“Women who might leave the labor force for child rearing or taking paid leave only make 76 cents compared to a man’s dollar,” said Lorena Roque, director of education, labor, and worker justice at the Center for Law and Social Policy. “Not having affordable childcare, not having paid family medical leave—we’re seeing those gaps are widening, and they still exist.”