In a ruling on Monday that could have significant repercussions on the future of college athletics, a regional director for the National Labor Relations Board ruled that Dartmouth men’s basketball players are employees and can move forward with an election to unionize.

All 15 members of the Dartmouth men’s basketball team signed a petition in September asking to join Local 560 of the Service Employees International Union. Unionizing would allow the players to negotiate over salary and working conditions, including practice hours and travel.

“Because Dartmouth has the right to control the work performed by the Dartmouth men’s basketball team, and the players perform that work in exchange for compensation, I find that the petitioned-for basketball players are employees within the meaning of the (National Labor Relations) Act,” NLRB Regional Director Laura Sacks wrote.

Dartmouth can appeal the regional director’s decision to the national board. Prior to the review, the players can vote on whether to form a union. Sacks did not set a date for the election.

While the implications are potentially significant if the ruling is upheld, this is not the first instance where student-athletes attempted to unionize.

Northwestern football players received a similar ruling in 2014, but it was overturned at the national level because the NLRB ruled it couldn’t assert jurisdiction. In that case, the NLRB, which only governs private employers, decided that allowing football players at what was the only private institution in the Big Ten at the time to unionize would destabilize the labor market in the conference.

The Ivy League is made up of private schools.

There is another complaint before a different NLRB body in California that claims football and basketball players at USC — another private school — should be deemed employees of not only the school, but also the Pac-12 Conference and the NCAA.

That hearing is set to resume this month. An affirmative ruling there provides the path forward. If the NCAA or a college athletics conference — both private organizations — is found to be an employer of athletes, then every college athlete has a private employer.

On multiple fronts, the NCAA is facing threats to its long-held model of amateurism in college athletics. The NCAA is facing multiple antitrust lawsuits, including one brought last week by attorneys general from Tennessee and Virginia that challenges how high school recruits can profit off their name, image, and likeness. The Dartmouth ruling can

These new challenges come in the wake of the June 2021 Supreme Court ruling in Alston v. NCAA. In a concurring opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh argued that “the NCAA’s business model would be flatly illegal in almost any other industry in America,” and wrote that the NCAA’s remaining rules restricting athlete compensation deserve further antitrust scrutiny.