Amare Thomas #0 of the Houston Cougars gives a stiff arm to Tamarcus Cooley #0 of the Louisiana State Tigers in the second half during the Kinder’s Texas Bowl at NRG Stadium on Dec. 27, 2025 in Houston, Texas. (Photo by Tim Warner/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — The Congressional Black Caucus and NAACP on Tuesday urged pushback against GOP-led redistricting efforts in Southern states via college sports, including a boycott of public universities by athletes and supporters.
U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and fellow Congressional Black Caucus members blasted a bill that sets forth a national framework for college athletes’ compensation.
But the CBC’s backlash went beyond just the legislation — which was yanked from the House’s voting schedule this week following unanimous opposition from the major voting bloc.
At a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol, the lawmakers rallied behind the NAACP’s call earlier Tuesday for Black athletes and fans to withhold “athletic and financial support from public universities in states that have moved to limit, weaken, or erase Black voting representation” following the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Louisiana v. Callais.
The decision from the nation’s highest court gutted the federal Voting Rights Act and has prompted a major redistricting push in Southern states that could threaten Black representation in Congress.
Southeastern Conference targeted
“We are here standing in solidarity with the NAACP and its call for athletes to boycott institutions within the (Southeastern Conference) that belong to states that have unleashed these Jim Crow-like racially oppressive tactics, which is unacceptable, unconscionable and un-American,” Jeffries said.
“We believe that the silence of these institutions is complicity, and we will not stand for it,” the New York Democrat added.
The SEC, a major athletic conference under the NCAA, includes several member universities located in states that have joined the redistricting wave. The NAACP pointed to Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas as “eight priority states.”
“In this moment, our democracy is in crisis,” said Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP, at Tuesday’s press conference.
“This is not about partisanship — this is about true representation, and for the NAACP, we will fight with all we have in solidarity with the Congressional Black Caucus to ensure that we have representation, or if we don’t, we will withhold the talent that play on the football field or on the basketball court,” he said.
SCORE Act under scrutiny
The Student Compensation and Opportunity through Rights and Endorsements, or ‘‘SCORE” Act, seeks to allow compensation but bar student-athletes from being recognized as employees and provide broad antitrust immunity to the NCAA and college sports conferences.
The college sports world continues to grapple with the fallout from the NCAA’s 2021 guidelines, which allowed student-athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness, or NIL.
A federal judge in June 2025 also approved the terms of a nearly $2.8 billion antitrust settlement that paved the way for schools to directly pay athletes.
The college sports landscape is also grappling with gender inequity in NIL deals, a patchwork of state NIL laws, booster collectives and the NCAA’s controversial transfer portal, among other issues.
House GOP leadership had also pulled the SCORE Act from the House floor in December.
In a statement, the CBC said U.S. Reps. Shomari Figures, D-Ala., and Janelle Bynum, D-Ore., two of the bill’s lead sponsors, had been negotiating changes in the legislation to improve it but pulled their support, and the CBC did so as well.
The caucus said its members cannot support legislation that benefits large athletic institutions when their leaders are not speaking out about redistricting that weakens Black representation in government.
“This is not politics as usual. This is a defining moral moment for our country,” the caucus said.
“For generations, Black athletes have helped build college athletics into one of the most powerful and profitable industries in American life. The success, visibility, and cultural influence of major athletic conferences and institutions are inseparable from the talent, labor, leadership, and cultural contributions of Black communities. Yet at the very moment those same communities face coordinated attacks on their democratic representation, too many leaders across college athletics have chosen silence.”
Letters sent
The caucus also said it has sent formal letters to SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey, Atlantic Coast Conference Commissioner Jim Phillips and NCAA President Charlie Baker “demanding immediate engagement and a public response regarding the ongoing assault on Black political representation throughout the South and across the nation.”
Congressional Black Caucus Chair Yvette Clarke, a New York Democrat, said the caucus “cannot support legislation benefiting major athletic institutions that continue to remain silent while Black voting rights and Black political power are being systematically dismantled across the South.”
Jeffries noted that “with respect to the SCORE Act, our position has been clear: If LSU is for it, we’re against it. If the University of Alabama is for it, we’re against it. If Ole Miss is for it, we’re against it. If the University of South Carolina is for it, we’re against it. If the University of Tennessee is for it, we’re against it, and if the SEC schools are for it, we are against it.”
