The federal government on Thursday announced it would join a multi-state lawsuit in an effort to bring competition in the labor market of college athletes.

The lawsuit challenges the NCAA transfer eligibility rule as an illegal restraint on college athletes’ ability to sell their image and likeness and control their education. Along with the U.S. Department of Justice, the states of Minnesota, Mississippi and Virginia and the District of Columbia. That means the total number of attorneys general backing the litigation to 11.

The case is believed to be the first time that the Department of Justice has signed on to a state-led antitrust lawsuit.

“There is strength in numbers,” Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said in a press release after his office filed the lawsuit on Dec. 7 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia. “This case would never have come to pass had many players not been sidelined by the NCAA’s arbitrary and unfair rule. We’re fighting for better competition and long-term change.”

The lawsuit is going after the NCAA’s requirement that college athletes who transfer a second time among Division I schools wait one year before competing in games.

The NCAA began automatically exempting first-time transfers from the regulation in 2021, but has continued to enforce the rule for subsequent transfers and denied waivers inconsistently, according to this lawsuit.

On Dec. 13, Judge John Preston Bailey issued a temporary restraining order, later extended to a preliminary injunction, prohibiting the NCAA from enforcing the rule and allowing college athletes to compete without fear of retaliation from the association. The preliminary injunction will run through at least the end of the 2023-24 academic year.

A trial date in the case has yet to be scheduled.

Along with Ohio, the 6 states on the original lawsuit are Colorado, Illinois, New York, North Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia.