The New Mexico Foundation for Open Government on Monday filed lawsuits against two of the state’s largest universities for allegedly refusing to release public records showing how the schools will pay millions of public dollars to student athletes resulting from an antitrust lawsuit.
A federal judge in June approved the terms of a nearly $2.8 billion settlement that paved the way for schools to directly pay athletes. Under the settlement, schools may choose to share revenues with student athletes up to an estimated cap of approximately $20.5 million per institution for the 2025-26 academic year.
The suits against the board of regents and record custodians at University of New Mexico and New Mexico State University allege they are violating the state Inspection of Public Records Act by refusing to release their contracts with student athletes and other documents that would show how they would implement new revenue-sharing rules resulting from the settlement.
Both schools denied NMFOG’s records requests on the grounds that the documents include “educational records” and “trade secrets,” according to the complaints. The other plaintiff in the NMSU lawsuit, high school and college sports reporter Nick Nuñez, alleges that the school initially claimed that it didn’t have any records responsive to his requests, but Assistant Athletic Director of Media Relations Michael Navarette told him they in fact did possess the records.
NMFOG noted in a news release on Tuesday that before the settlement, private third parties paid student athletes to use their “name, image and likeness,” — known as NIL — and compensation terms were largely unknown to the public. After the settlement, public universities like UNM and NMSU are making direct payments to student athletes, and “records of these expenditures by state institutions should be public, like any other state expense would be,” the group said.
“In addition to the universities’ total secrecy on how they will spend millions of dollars,” NMFOG said in a statement, the schools also are “hiding the contractual terms they require students to abide by, meaning there is no way to know whether students are being treated fairly” or whether the schools’ agreements with the student athletes abide by Title IX, a 1972 law requiring schools that receive federal funding to provide equitable opportunities and treatment to men and women athletes.
The lawsuits cite other schools’ revenue-sharing contracts that have reportedly raised concerns, such as one at Florida State University that allowed the school to extend its contract with a student athlete without renegotiating the terms, and one for the South Carolina women’s basketball team that included a nondisclosure agreement prohibiting them from sharing their compensation with anyone.
“It calls into question, what are the terms here?” NM FOG Legal Director Amanda Lavin said in an interview. “Students aren’t necessarily the ones with bargaining power — it’s the universities.”
Neither university would comment.
“We’re just learning about this filing and have no comment at this time,” UNM Interim Executive Director of Strategic Communications Ben Cloutier told Source NM via email on Tuesday.
NMSU Spokesperson Amanda Bradford also said in a written response that NMSU had not yet “received service of the lawsuit” and would be “reserving comment until after that’s been accomplished.”
