Sports

New Jersey Becomes 5th State To Promise Name, Image, Likeness Rights To College Athletes

The change in rules will start in 2025.

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New Jersey has become the fifth state in the United States to pass legislation allowing college athletes to commercially exploit their names, images, and likenesses for monetary gain and have the bill signed into law by its governor. However, as is the case with the four other bills signed by governors, these rights will not be provided to New Jersey’s college athletes for some time.

In fact, the “New Jersey Fair Play Act” seems to be the slowest of the bunch to give college athletes the same right that all other students on campus currently possess — the right to exploit one’s publicity. The final provision in New Jersey’s very briefly crafted bill indicates that the act shall take effect immediately, but it will only first be applicable “in the fifth academic year following the date of enactment.” Thus, it appears that college athletes in New Jersey will not actually possess the right to be compensated for use of their names, images, and likenesses until 2025, at the earliest.

Florida has a similar law, signed by Governor Ron DeSantis, that becomes effective on July 1, 2021, at which time college athletes may begin to earn compensation for the use of their names, images, and likenesses. The compensation must be commensurate with the market value of the authorized use of such publicity rights.

In Nebraska, any postsecondary institution can actually begin allowing its athletes the ability to exploit their publicity rights for commercial gain as soon as today. However, no schools have decided to take advantage of the provision in its “Nebraska Fair Pay to Play Act.” At the latest, the law requires postsecondary institutions to recognize such rights for college athletes by July 1, 2023.

The other states that have passed bills and had their respective governors sign them into law — California and Colorado — each have effective dates in 2023.

In the meantime, the federal government has been continuously setting up committee hearings to learn more about various college athlete national name, image, and likeness proposals; discuss what role the NCAA should have in the development of national name, image, and likeness rules; and often boast about their prior experience as college athletes themselves. The most recent hearing was held on September 15 by the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions. Overall, Capitol Hill seems to still be failing to grasp the situation at hand, with some politicians seemingly not being able to understand that, in many sports, athletes cannot simply decide to play professionally in the United States whenever they wish (i.e., NFL and NBA).

With little faith that the federal government can or will prioritize the debate of actual legislation surrounding college athletes’ name, image, and likeness rights, the task will likely be left to the states or the NCAA itself. New Jersey is now the fifth state to sign legislation on the subject, and over 30 more states are considering similar legislation. While New Jersey’s delay in providing rights to college athletes may not put a lot of pressure on the NCAA to take immediate action, the association is staring at the July 1, 2021, effective date in Florida and wants to do whatever it can to avoid Florida schools having any advantage over other member institutions in other states.

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Darren Heitner is the founder of Heitner Legal. He is the author of How to Play the Game: What Every Sports Attorney Needs to Know, published by the American Bar Association, and is an adjunct professor at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. You can reach him by email at heitner@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter at @DarrenHeitner.

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