Top NC court delays arguments in ACC media rights cases

The North Carolina Supreme Court has delayed oral arguments that had been scheduled next week in a pair of lawsuits pitting the Atlantic Coast Conference against member schools Clemson and Florida State.

The court issued orders Tuesday in both cases. The orders signed by Justice Allison Riggs delayed oral arguments from April 17 until September.

Lawyers representing the ACC and Clemson had requested the delay in their case as the two sides work to finalize a settlement. Lawyers in the Florida State University case had not requested a delay. The Supreme Court decided “on its own motion” to push back the FSU case because lawyers had requested to have both cases argued on the same day.

The legal action is moving forward more than one month after the conference and two schools announced a settlement of their legal dispute over the schools’ athletic media rights and the conference’s exit fee.

A court filing Monday asked the state’s high court to delay arguments in the Clemson case.

“On 4 March 2025, by vote of the Board of Trustees for Clemson University, and the Board of Directors for the Atlantic Coast Conference, the Parties agreed in principle to resolving these matters,” according to the document endorsed by lawyers on both sides of the dispute. “The Parties have been working to reduce this agreement to writing, but additional time is needed to finalize and implement the elements of the resolution between the Parties.”

In the name of “judicial economy,” Clemson and the ACC asked to continue the oral arguments to the state Supreme Court’s “next available calendar” in September.

The delay would “provide the parties an opportunity to concentrate on fully resolving these cases and open up this Court’s resources to address other matters,” according to the court filing. “The Parties anticipate that, once reduced to a mutually acceptable agreement and all conditions implemented a motion for dismissal of the appeal will be filed. The Parties will promptly notify the Court of such a conclusion.”

No similar request was filed in the ACC’s lawsuit against Florida State. Since the March 4 announcement of the lawsuit settlement, the state of Florida filed a March 13 request to take part in the case’s oral argument.

“The State’s brief addressed whether the State of Florida waived its sovereign immunity from suit in North Carolina’s courts, through only the FSU Board’s relationship with the ACC (a North Carolina unincorporated nonprofit association), in light of a North Carolina (not Florida) statute that did not even exist at the onset of that relationship,” lawyers representing Florida wrote in the document filed nine days after the settlement announcement.

“The State’s interest and insight on this question go beyond the specific facts of this case to the countless other circumstances in which states may find themselves haled into each other’s courts,” Florida’s lawyers wrote.

A state Business Court order denying Florida State’s motion to have the case dismissed based on sovereign immunity “contravenes protections inherent in the federal constitutional scheme by subjugating one sovereign state to another,” Florida’s court filing argued. “Taken at face value, the rule put forward therein could be the blueprint for a wholesale bypass of state sovereign immunity protections.”

ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips announced the settlement on March 4.

“Today’s resolution begins the next chapter of this storied league and further solidifies the ACC as a premier conference,” Phillips said in a statement reported by ESPN.com. “As we look ahead to our collective long-term future, I want to express my deepest appreciation to the ACC Board of Directors for its ongoing leadership, patience and dedication throughout this process. The league has competed at the highest level for more than 70 years and this new structure demonstrates the ACC embracing innovation and further incentivizing our membership based on competition and viewership results.”

“The settlements, coupled with the ACC’s continued partnership with ESPN, allow us to focus on our collective future — including Clemson and Florida State — united in an 18-member conference demonstrating the best in intercollegiate athletics,” Phillips added.

A grant-of-rights agreement giving the ACC control of each member school’s media rights remains in effect through 2036, according to reports of the settlement. But the exit fee a school would face for leaving the conference would drop.

Under current rules, a school leaving the ACC “must pay three times the operating budget — a figure that would be about $120 million — plus control of that team’s media rights through the conclusion of the grant of rights,” ESPN.com reported.

Court filings have suggested the total cost could be $700 million.

The settlement would allow a school to leave the conference with control of its media rights. The exit fee would be $165 million next year and would drop by $18 million a year until reaching $75 million in 2030-31.

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