A group of Senate Democrats on Tuesday voted with most Republicans after months of painstaking negotiations to help advance a sweeping college athletics bill.
An initial procedural vote on the measure led by Commerce Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and ranking member Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) moved forward on a 74-24 vote, despite opposition on both sides of the aisle. The move tees up more floor debate and a final passage vote before lawmakers leave to campaign for the midterms.
Cantwell said that even though the bill wasn’t perfect, it would help protect students’ rights. The bill would establish national standards for how college athletes are compensated and override the patchwork of state laws that currently govern student athletes’ name, image and likeness rights, among other provisions.
“I will not let the perfect be the enemy of the essential,” Cantwell said on the floor ahead of the vote. “This is the last best chance to save college sports and put HBCUs at the table where the future gets decided,” she said, referring to historically Black colleges and universities.
Twenty-five Democrats threw their support behind advancing it, including Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.).
The chamber is expected to stay for the entirety of its planned three-week session now that senators opened a path to take up the bill, according to four Senate aides granted anonymity to discuss planning. Fast-tracking the legislation would depend on a deal between all 100 senators, which would require overcoming holdouts’ opposition.
Supporters of the bill behind the scenes have been fielding concerns from senators and a coalition of sports, civil rights and labor groups who’ve criticized the measure’s planned regulation of the multi-billion dollar industry.
Democrats like Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) spent weeks trying to convince his colleagues to “step back and oppose” the bill in its current form, saying in a press conference with AFL-CIO this week it would “preserve a system of exploitation that is damaging our athletes.”
Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), who voted ‘no’, told reporters Tuesday the bill “falls way short.”
“It really jeopardizes college athletes’ health and safety. It gives broad-based antitrust exemption to the NCAA and gets very little back from it,” Booker added, referring to the National Collegiate Athletic Association. “It is a bill that really, unfortunately, as one of the handful of college football players in this place, it does not cure what are some of the biggest things that are really threatening college players.”
Some Democrats who supported the bill, including New Mexico Sen. Ben Ray Luján, cited concerns from student athletes and coaches in their home states as the reason why.
“Student athletes and others wanted to make sure that the conferences that they were playing for were getting treated in a fair way,” he said. “Go talk to athletes from our schools and across the country and see what this means to them, not just athletes from the super conferences around America.”
The legislation has the backing of President Donald Trump, major sports conferences like the Big Ten and Southeastern, student sports organizations and HBCUs.
Several Republicans who were on the fence earlier about the bill, including Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), were convinced to support it after Cruz added language to clarify that it would not pre-empt state laws on transgender athletes’ participation on women’s sports teams.
Others Republicans like Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) said he couldn’t support advancing the measure because “there’s too much government involvement in it.”
Jordain Carney and Kelsey Brugger contributed to this report.
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