North Carolina, NCAA sued for academic scandal

Steve Berkowitz | USA TODAY Sports

Attorneys representing two former University of North Carolina athletes on Thursday filed a lawsuit against the university and the NCAA in connection with the academic scandal involving Tar Heels athletes.

The suit, which seeks to become a class action, was filed in a North Carolina state court on behalf of women's basketball player Rashanda McCants and football player Devon Ramsay by lawyers from Hausfeld LLP the same firm that is pursuing the Ed O'Bannon antitrust case against the NCAA concerning the use of college athletes' names, images and likenesses.

Rashanda McCants is the younger sister of former North Carolina men's basketball player Rashad McCants.

This case involves allegations of breach of contract against UNC for a failure to provide "academically sound classes with legitimate educational instruction."

The complaint also accuses the NCAA of negligence because: "Although the NCAA's rules prohibit academic fraud, the NCAA knew of dozens of instances of academic fraud in its member schools' athletic programs over the last century, and it nevertheless refused to implement adequate monitoring systems to detect and prevent these occurrences at its member institutions."

The suit seeks unspecified damages and asks for "the formation of an independent commission to review, audit, assess, and report on academic integrity in NCAA-member athletic programs and certify member-school curricula as providing comparable educations and educational opportunities to athletes and non-athletes alike."

The suit seeks to create two broad classes of plaintiffs:

— A damages class comprising anyone who attended UNC-Chapel Hill on an athletic scholarship and enrolled in a broad range of African and Afro-American Studies and/or Swahili classes between 1989 and 2011. The list of those classes runs for 12 pages of the 100-page complaint.

— An injunctive relief class comprising anyone who attended UNC-Chapel Hill on an athletic scholarship or is currently attending the school on an athletic scholarship.

Asked what the plaintiffs stand to gain from this lawsuit, lead attorney Michael Hausfeld told USA TODAY Sports on Thursday night: "One is that the athletes at UNC get the education that was committed to them, and whatever earning power they lost as result of the education that they were directed into.

"The second aspect is that all athletes – male and female, in all sports, in all of Division I – are ensured a meaningful education by having certification as to the integrity of the academic curricula for athletes and that there are no programs or projects that impede academic progress, nor that there are any academic opportunities that are lost to them because of their athletic commitments."

Rick White, UNC's associate vice chancellor of communications and public affairs, said in a statement: "We have not seen the lawsuit, therefore we have no comment at this time."

The NCAA' provided a similar statement from its chief legal officer, Donald Remy: "We have not yet been notified of the lawsuit filed in North Carolina court today. Because we have not seen the filing, we have no comment."

Last October, an independent investigator released a report that found evidence directly tying years of no-show classes at North Carolina to a scheme that helped hundreds of athletes — particularly football and men's basketball players — raise their grades and stay eligible over an 18-year period.

Kenneth Wainstein, a former U.S. Attorney and general counsel to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, placed most of the wrongdoing on Deborah Crowder, a longtime secretary who managed the African and Afro-American Studies Department, and Julius Nyang'oro, who became chair of curriculum for the department in 1992.

Wainstein, however, also found that academic advisers who worked closely with the athletic department regularly steered athletes to these classes for the specific purpose of raising their grades, going so far on some occasions as to advise Crowder what grades were needed to maintain eligibility.

In November, attorneys representing another former Tar Heels football player, Michael McAdoo, sued UNC-Chapel Hill in federal court. That suit seeks to become a class action on behalf of anyone who attended the school on a football scholarship between 1993 and 2011. It asks for relief that includes a court appointee to review the curriculum and course selection for all UNC football players going forward for five years and the provision of four-year, guaranteed scholarships for all UNC football players going forward.

The new suit opens up a much broader legal front, with a legal team that includes Robert Orr, a former North Carolina Supreme Court justice.

The complaint claims that the NCAA "has voluntarily assumed a duty to protect the education and educational opportunities of student-athletes (including the provision of academically sound courses) participating in NCAA-sponsored athletic programs at NCAA member institutions." It adds that the association "purports to collect detailed information from its member schools and conduct independent investigations concerning academic integrity" and "had a duty of reasonable care" to monitor schools' educational programs.

The complaint then alleges that the NCAA "acted carelessly and negligently in its position as the regulatory body supervising the academic integrity of college athletics programs and governing its student-athletes. … The NCAA knew or should have known from its history and otherwise that the college-athletics environment at UNC and other member institutions was ripe for academic fraud."