- Clemson University is urging the North Carolina Supreme Court to overturn a state Business Court ruling in a media-rights dispute between the school and the Atlantic Coast Conference.
- Judge Louis Bledsoe refused to dismiss the ACC's North Carolina-based lawsuit against Clemson. Clemson argues the dispute should proceed in South Carolina courts.
- The ACC is involved in ongoing media-rights lawsuits with Clemson and Florida State in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Florida courts.
Clemson University’s lawyers are urging the North Carolina Supreme Court to overturn a state Business Court decision and allow the schools’ media-rights battle with the Atlantic Coast Conference to play out in South Carolina’s courts.
Lawsuits pitting Clemson against the ACC are active now in both Carolinas.
“Clemson University took its claims regarding its media rights contract with the Atlantic Coast Conference to its home forum, state court in Pickens County, South Carolina,” the university’s lawyers wrote in a brief filed Thursday with North Carolina’s highest court. “Despite being able to fully defend the case there and even bring counterclaims, the ACC responded by suing Clemson in North Carolina state court — arguing that Clemson waived its status as a sovereign South Carolina entity by simply being a member of the ACC, an unincorporated nonprofit association based in North Carolina.”
“But the South Carolina General Assembly has not said that Clemson can be sued in North Carolina or anywhere else outside South Carolina, and Clemson has not, by its litigation conduct, expressly waived its sovereign immunity,” the Clemson court filing continued.
Relying on a North Carolina Supreme Court precedent from 2022, “the Business Court opined that it does not matter what the law is in South Carolina, and that Clemson’s actions — not in litigation, but by simply remaining a member of the ACC — waived its immunity from suit here. The Business Court’s decision rejecting Clemson’s sovereign immunity defense is fundamentally inconsistent with the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Franchise Tax Board of California v. Hyatt [a 2019 case], as well as longstanding precedent in this State.”
Clemson asks the North Carolina Supreme Court to overrule its 2022 ruling in Farmer v. Troy University or distinguish that precedent from the current dispute, “conforming North Carolina law to federal constitutional requirements.”
The ACC is battling both Clemson and Florida State University over media rights. Competing lawsuits are playing out in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Florida courts.
The conference has asked North Carolina’s highest court to link the schedules for hearing its lawsuits against both member schools. Paperwork filed in September suggested a hearing could take place after mid-January 2025.
Both lawsuits address the multimillion-dollar price tag associated with leaving the athletic conference. One court filing labeled the FSU case a “$700 million” dispute. The legal battle with FSU started in December 2023. The lawsuit against Clemson began in March.
Lower courts rejected both universities’ requests to have the ACC’s lawsuits thrown out of North Carolina courts. Appeals in both suits sit now with the North Carolina Supreme Court.
North Carolina Business Court Judge Louis Bledsoe issued a 53-page order in July granting part of Clemson’s request to dismiss the ACC’s legal claims. But Bledsoe refused to dismiss the lawsuit in its entirety. He also rejected Clemson’s motion to stay the proceedings in the North Carolina case.
Bledsoe also issued an earlier ruling rejecting Florida State’s request to throw out the ACC’s suit in North Carolina.
“The only court that has jurisdiction over FSU, Clemson, and the ACC — and thus the only court that can assure a consistent, uniform interpretation of the Grant of Rights Agreements and the ACC’s Constitution and Bylaws, the determinations at the core of the Pending Actions — is a North Carolina court,” Bledsoe wrote.
“The Florida court in the Florida Action cannot bind Clemson in South Carolina. The South Carolina court in the South Carolina Action cannot bind FSU in Florida. Each of these courts and this Court could reach conflicting conclusions about the same terms of the same North Carolina contracts upon which the Pending Actions rest — and in so doing create procedural chaos and tremendous confusion at a time when the ACC, FSU, and Clemson need binding clarity concerning their rights under the ACC’s most important contracts with its Members,” the judge continued.
“Only a North Carolina court, most likely in a single consolidated action in North Carolina, can render consistent, uniform determinations binding the ACC, FSU, and Clemson concerning the documents that are at issue in all four Pending Actions,” Bledsoe added.