Olivia Moultrie, a 15-year-old soccer prospect who accepted a scholarship offer to UNC at age 11 and signed a marketing deal with Nike at 13, has filed an antitrust lawsuit against the National Women’s Soccer League.
Moultrie alleges in the suit that the NWSL’s age minimum requiring players to be 18 years old to sign a contract violates the Sherman Act. Moultrie currently trains with the NWSL’s Portland Thorns and has played in scrimmages with the professional team, but is only eligible to play in official games for its youth teams. The suit requests preliminary injunctive relief that would allow Moultrie to be eligible to sign a professional contract and play for the first team immediately.
“It’s always been a dream of mine to play professionally in the U.S.,” Moultrie said in a statement provided by her lawyers. “I know girls my age are competing around the world and I just want to get on the field and officially compete.”
Her fight to play in the NWSL was first reported by The Athletic last month.
The suit asks for monetary damages, but points out that irreparable harm is being done to Moultrie’s professional career, including potentially lost salary, reduction in value of marketing opportunities and delaying, “her likelihood of being invited to seek a place on the U.S. women’s national team, and making the team, or the U.S. Olympic team.” It also reserves the right to name other persons or entities as party to the suit in the future, including the U.S. Soccer Federation, which pays U.S. women’s national team players in the NWSL as allocated players and previously managed the league from 2013-2020.
Included in the filings are a list of supporters for Moultrie’s right to play, including Portland Thorns and U.S. women’s national team players Becky Sauerbrunn and Lindsey Horan.
According to the suit, Moultrie has made multiple requests to sign a professional contract and has been rebuffed by the league each time. Court documents allege that, if not for the age minimum, Moultrie “would have been eligible to sign and would have already signed a professional contract to play for one of the NWSL’s teams, and could have signed a contract to do so last season.”
“The truth is that if Olivia Moultrie was male, she’d already be playing in MLS,” said Miller Nash Graham & Dunn sports law attorney Max Forer, one of the lawyers representing Moultrie. “Further, she’s already eligible to play for the U.S. Women’s National Team but can’t officially play in the league that develops and prepares talent for the National Team, that’s unfair.”
The suit alleges that the league has yet to provide any evidence of when or how the age rule was enacted and says courts have previously ruled against age minimums in professional sports leagues unless they are part of a collective bargaining agreement with a labor union. The NWSL does not have a CBA, though the NWSL Players Association is currently negotiating with the league. According to the suit, an initial CBA proposal has been made but does not include an age limitation.
The suit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Portland, points out that players under the age of 18 are regularly signed professionally in Major League Soccer, as well as in other countries around the world.
Importantly, the suit also points out that the NWSL has market power in the labor market for women’s professional soccer in the U.S. because it “is the only acquirer of talent in (the U.S.) market” and, because of FIFA rules, Moultrie does not have the option to sign overseas. It also makes the case that while the NWSL does share some business practices, it has separate owners for each of its 10 teams, all of which compete for players and for profits individually.
