Former UNC athletes argue University broke promises

Former UNC student-athletes Rashanda McCants and Devon Ramsay dealt the University another blow when the two sued the school, making claims eerily similar to a previously filed suit.

Former football player Michael McAdoo filed a lawsuit in November that said UNC breached its contract with him when the school did not provide him with an adequate education. The new class-action suit filed by McCants and Ramsay, a former women’s basketball player and a former football player respectively, hits on some of McAdoo’s key points, but there are important differences between two.

The new lawsuit has the potential to encompass more plaintiffs, but both seek to protect student-athletes’ rights.

“The University of North Carolina and the NCAA promised to safeguard and provide academically sound classes to student-athletes. Those promises were broken,” said Sathya Gosselin of Hausfeld Global Litigation Solutions, which represents McCants and Ramsay. “I can’t comment on the reasons for Mr. McAdoo’s suit, but insofar as he is pursuing the same goals, there are some similarities.”

Gosselin did not believe McAdoo would join his clients’ suit.

“We are aware of Mr. McAdoo’s suit, which has distinct legal claims, a different class definition (limited to football players) and is in federal court,” Gosselin said in an email.

One of McAdoo’s attorneys, Jeremi Duru of Mehri and Skalet, PLLC, declined to comment on the relationship of his client’s case to that of McCants and Ramsay’s.

Robert Orr, another attorney for McCants and Ramsay and an adjunct professor at UNC’s School of Law, said his clients’ case makes more sweeping allegations against the NCAA, saying the association implemented rules that encourage academic fraud.

“The ‘sweeping’ part would be the culpability of the NCAA is creating the kind of specific mess we’ve seen at UNC, failing to institute a system that actually protects the academic integrity of the education every athlete is supposed to get, and being more concerned about making money and keeping the status quo than actually caring about the promise of a college education,” Orr said in an email. “One of the remedies sought in the complaint is a national commission to investigate the educational quality and standards being given to athletes around the country.”

Orr explained his plaintiffs represent a specific class that McAdoo, and any football or basketball player at UNC who took a fraudulent course in the former department of African and Afro-American Studies, would be eligible to join.

So far, McCants and Ramsay are the only plaintiffs for their suit.

“As of this writing, we have not amended our complaint to reflect the addition of any additional proposed class representatives, but we have received many inquiries from student-athletes in the last week, as well as a considerable outpouring of support from the greater student-athlete ally community of educators, advocates, professional athletes and reformers,” Gosselin said.

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