CLASP
The Center for Law and Social Policy
On September 29, Diane Harris spoke to the National Work and Family Coalition about findings from her Paid Leave in the South report.
CLASP Policy Analyst Christian Collins appeared on the the Roland Martin Unfiltered Daily Digital Show to discuss the Protect College Sports Act. In his segment, Christian talked about the bill, addressed the problematic aspects of it, and responded to questions from the show’s panelists.
View this segment here:
Publication submitted by NOWCRJ and CLASP to the Mayor’s Office, City of New Orleans
This paper documents, from worker testimony and the public record, how the systems around Mardi Gras cleanup labor have not worked for the people who make our city’s signature celebration possible, and it hands you the fix in two parts. Part One is seven wins your administration can deliver before Carnival 2027 under existing authority, beginning with a public Labor Compliance Audit of city contracts that remaining federal ARPA funds can lawfully finance before they expire December 31, 2026. Part Two is the New Orleans Fair Work Ordinance, which makes the protection permanent for every temporary worker in the city, built entirely within the authority state preemption leaves untouched.
By Lorena Roque
This report from CLASP, with contributions from the International Rescue Committee (IRC), provides an in-depth look at the role of gig work in the lives of immigrant workers. The data show that gig work can offer short-term financial relief to immigrant workers and their families. However, the longstanding lack of regulations and worker protection in this sector makes gig work particularly precarious for immigrants, who are disproportionately affected by discriminatory and xenophobic rhetoric and policies.
The report draws on three different forms of immigrant gig worker data: programmatic data from the IRC, a service provider for immigrants and refugees; survey data; and qualitative interviews. The qualitative interviews were conducted in late 2024 and early 2025, before the second Trump Administration ramped up its anti-immigrant policies to the current level.
In addition to providing insight into the lived experience of immigrant gig workers and their families, this report offers recommendations for policymakers to ensure that all immigrant gig workers are able to do their jobs safely and with dignity.
Wendy Chun-Hoon appeared on MomsRising Radio to discuss the affordability crisis. She used the 2025 poverty data from the U.S. Census Bureau to describe how bad public policy decisions created this crisis — and how good decisions could address it.
Listen to her appearance here:
By Christian Collins
Last month, the push for college athletes to collectively bargain gained significant momentum with the news that football players at Stanford University, the Oregon State University women’s basketball team, and over 100 women’s college basketball players have publicly expressed their desire to bargain as employees and taken key steps toward unionizing. Unionization would allow players a direct say in key terms of their athletic participation, from health and safety to transfers, eligibility, and compensation.
These developments come at a time when Congress is actively considering legislation to dramatically reshape college sports. Last year, a bill that would prevent college athletes from being recognized as employees and enshrine antitrust protections for the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) into law—the Student Compensation and Opportunity through Rights and Endorsements (SCORE) Act—was introduced in the House and gained 21 cosponsors. This summer, the Protect College Sports Act (PCSA) passed the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation on a 19-9 vote. The PCSA cleared a major hurdle this week after winning a Senate cloture vote 74-24, despite the bill text not being finalized or released to the public at the time of the vote and with several legal questions on bill provisions that have yet to be addressed.
College Athletes Meet the Legal Standard to be Labeled Employees
Two pathways—collective bargaining and federal legislation—represent the possible avenues by which current tensions in college sports may be resolved. Collective bargaining would guarantee protection under federal law through allowing college athletes to jointly negotiate with colleges and the NCAA over the terms and conditions of their athletic participation. To avoid going to the bargaining table with athletes, colleges and the NCAA have sought intervention from Congress to instead be protected from federal law for past and present exploitation. PCSA, like its predecessor SCORE, seeks to place the blame of financial gaps squarely on the shoulders of athletes and solidify the longstanding advantages that have enabled colleges to profit handsomely off the talent and hard work of those athletes—without having to compensate them fairly or grant them the rights and protections that employees are entitled to.
The system that has persisted for decades in which athletes generate billions of dollars in revenue for colleges, the NCAA, and media companies, yet see a small share returned to them in the form of scholarships is now threatening to collapse. In recent years, courts have increasingly recognized athletics participation as work and athletes as employees. In NCAA v. Alston in 2021, the Supreme Court rejected the claim that “amateurism” is a valid defense against the NCAA complying with laws that ensure fair market competition. Following the decision, the NCAA eliminated its rules restricting athletes from receiving compensation from endorsements, ushering in the new era of “name, image, and likeness” (NIL) deals. Relatedly, the House v. NCAA settlement in 2025 awarded current and former Division I athletes $2.8 billion in damages due to denying them NIL compensation and established fairer compensation for future athletes at schools that agreed to the settlement through direct revenue sharing of $20.5 million per year, rising 4 percent annually.
Similarly, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) under Biden in 2024 determined that a group of Dartmouth college basketball players met the common-law definition of employee, which “requires that the employer have the right to control the employee’s work, and that that work be performed in exchange for compensation,” pointing to the non-monetary benefits that athletes receive—even in the absence of scholarships, per Ivy League rules. While the players voted to unionize following this decision, they withdrew their petition to be recognized after the 2024 election in anticipation of an incoming NLRB that would be more likely to reject their petition.
Congress Can’t “Protect College Sports” by Ignoring the Participants
While the PCSA is neutral on its face concerning the question of athletes’ employment status, it would enshrine into law a range of terms and conditions of athletic participation, eliminating athletes’ opportunities to bargain over these terms and in many cases setting terms that are favorable to schools, conferences, and the NCAA. As the American Economic Liberties Project wrote in its memo opposing the legislation, the bill “puts Congress in the shoes of the players and makes choices and tradeoffs they wouldn’t necessarily make in a true collective bargaining process, where health, safety, wellness, and economic terms would all be on the table.” These terms impact not just players’ experience in sports, but also in academics and their personal lives. Transfer rules, for example, seek to prevent frequently changing rosters and athletes easily seeking better contracts elsewhere. In doing so, it also limits athletes’ choice about which schools and teams are best for them as students to, for example, pursue a new major or be closer to family. In addition, it allows schools to use the transfer portal as a weapon to wield against students by kicking them into the portal as punishment, like if they’re suspected of organizing other athletes. Rather than allowing athletes a voice in the process, the PCSA locks into law the major terms of their participation, preventing athletes from winning better terms in the future and extending anticompetitive immunity to the NCAA that few industries enjoy.
Most concerningly, college sports legislation has been crafted with little to no input from the college athletes themselves. As one current University of Utah football player observed during a Senate committee hearing on the PCSA, “It’s like there’s no student-athlete in those conversations at all.” In recent weeks, current and former college athletes across the country have come out against the bill. A letter with signatories from a range of schools argues that the PCSA would make it “substantially more difficult for student-athletes to receive legitimate compensation,” while athletes from the United College Athletes Association have said they favor collective bargaining as a way to settle key questions in college sports. One former college athlete argued in an op-ed that “players, coaches, schools and communities that made these sports great in the first place” should be the ones to make decisions about the future of college sports—not Washington. As the joint letter states, the fact that “the issue of conference alignment and media rights pooling have been among the most contentious, and also seems to involve student-athletes the least” is very telling: right now, Congress and the NCAA are negotiating over the distribution of the $19 billion in annual revenues the college athletes generate through hours of practices, competitions, travel, and hard work without allowing them a seat at the table. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the AFL-CIO Sports Council, a collaboration between labor unions that represent professional athletes, similarly reject the PCSA.
Congress should step aside from attempting to govern the minutiae of college athletes’ daily lives and lock in further advantages for powerful entities such as the NCAA. Schools don’t need to wait on Congress to act; if they chose to, they could negotiate with athletes to build a fair and equitable college athletics system tomorrow by voluntarily recognizing athletes as employees. The athletes whose hard work and dedication are the raw material for the enterprise beloved by millions of Americans should be fairly represented in the process as the workers they are.
Other CLASP publications on the exploitation of college athletes and related public policies include:
- Congress Is Weaponizing Federal Law Against College Athletes By Cutting Pell Grant Access and Stripping Labor Protections
- The SCORE Act Would Harm College Athletes by Codifying Inequity into Federal Law
- Equal Play, Unequal Pay: Race-Conscious Admissions and the Systemic Exploitation of Black Male Athletes
Washington, D.C., September 15, 2026—Today’s release of the U.S. Census Bureau’s national Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance data for 2025 may be the last year of positive impact, as the prior administration’s policy choices taper off. Despite this, enormous income inequality persists.
In 2025, median household income increased 2.6 percent, to $87,460. Median earnings for women also increased by 3.2 percent; they now make 84 percent of what their male counterparts are paid. And 92.1 percent of the U.S. population had health insurance for at least some part of last year.
While these numbers may not seem concerning, a closer look reveals troubling trends and worrying indicators for future years. The median income didn’t rise enough to cover today’s inflation; indeed, when accounting for the effect of inflation in 2026, median income only rose less than one percentage point.
When income doesn’t keep up with inflation, the individuals and families most affected are those earning the least amount of money. This demographic is also disproportionately affected by the many provisions in H.R.1, which passed in July 2025, and that will further jeopardize economic security. We will not see the true impact of these provisions until next year’s numbers are released and as elements of these policies take full effect, but an estimated 4.5 million people lost SNAP coverage between July 2025 and May 2026, including approximately 1.5 million children.
Today’s data also showed that nearly eight million people were pushed into poverty due to health expenses. With millions more expected to lose Medicaid coverage because of H.R.1, the number of people who enter poverty due to higher out-of-pocket health care costs will also increase in the coming years.
“Many of the policies enacted in July 2025 through H.R.1 are on a long fuse, with just some of the massive cuts taking effect last year and many more on tap in the coming years. This means that the numbers we see today will only get worse in the future, including for children, women, immigrants, and people of color. We’re especially concerned about immigrants whose ability to work and access care without fear of immigration enforcement has already severely impacted their daily lives and economic security,” said Wendy Chun-Hoon, executive director of the Center for Law and Social Policy.
The persistent gender wage gap is also a nagging indicator. While that gap narrowed in 2025, likely due to the beneficial polices of the previous administration, women’s wages only moved closer to men’s by three cents. Such a slight increase will not move the needle on income inequality.
Overall, today’s data can be seen as setting the baseline for the harmful policies hardwired to play out in the coming years. And even at this baseline, we can see that people are not moving out of poverty—they are holding steady. While we are relieved that the news is not worse, we recognize that the affordability crisis and impending cuts to programs families rely on will increase income inequality, widen the wealth and gender wage gaps, and push more Americans into economic precarity and poverty.
“As the affordability crisis deepens, so does the country’s wealth gap. H.R.1’s tax cuts for the wealthy were largely funded by draconian cuts to programs that support people with lower incomes. As a result, we expect to see income inequality rise even more in the coming years, as income soars for the wealthy while working families will see lower incomes and continued challenges with affording the groceries, rent, and other things they need for to survive—and thrive,” said Chun-Hoon.
By
Excerpt:
The Center for Law and Social Policy describes a workplace landscape where racialized hostility, sexual harassment, and retaliation intersect with unequal power and economic insecurity. Research published by Harvard Business Review found that Black women are uniquely burdened by the “angry Black woman” stereotype, with expressions of frustration more readily interpreted as hostility or aggression, which can damage how colleagues view their competence and leadership potential.
By
Excerpt:
“Many of the policies enacted in July 2025 through H.R.1 are on a long fuse, with just some of the massive cuts taking effect last year and many more on tap in the coming years,” Wendy Chun-Hoon, executive director of the left-leaning Center for Law and Social Policy, said in a statement, referring to the GOP package.