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A new lawsuit filed by the mother of University of Tennessee five-star football recruit Faizon Brandon challenges North Carolina state agencies’ authority to prohibit NIL deals for public high school athletes.
Brandon, a junior quarterback at Grimsley High School in North Carolina and the number one-ranked prospect in the Class of 2026, is currently prohibited from signing NIL deals during the 2024-25 academic year, according to a North Carolina board of education policy.
Sportico reports Faizon’s mother, Rolanda Brandon, filed a lawsuit on Friday against North Carolina’s board of education and department of public instruction, claiming they failed to follow Senate Bill 452.
That bill states that the board of education is to regulate “student amateur status requirements, including rules related to use of a student’s name, image and likeness.”
The board’s sweeping ban on NIL deals covers public appearances, commercials, autograph signings, athletic camps and clinics, sale of non-fungible tokens, product or service endorsements, promotional activities and social media advertisements.
As Brandon sees it, the legislature wouldn’t have chosen the word “use” if it anticipated the board of education would ban any use. The legislature allegedly picked “use” with the belief the implementing agency would regulate the activity; if the legislature wished to see the activity banned, it would have chosen a word such as “ban” or “prohibit.” By prohibiting NIL deals, the agency has allegedly acted outside the scope of its authority.
Rolanda Brandon claims in her lawsuit that the ban on NIL deals for high school athletes “entirely precludes” her son from “entering into a formal licensing and endorsement agreement.”
That policy, the lawsuit claims, has already cost her son Faizon “potentially millions of dollars” including a “substantial” amount of money that was offered to him by a “prominent, national trading card company” in April that would have provided him with “financial security for years.”
All in all, the lawsuit claims, North Carolina’s high school NIL ban could cost Faizon Brandon over $1 million when compared to high school athletes in states where NIL deals are allowed.
The lawsuit also stresses the fact that high school athletes at private North Carolina schools “have signed endorsement agreements that allow them to earn compensation from licensing the use of their NIL.”