Monroe County Judge Grants Preliminary Injunction Against NCAA Over Athlete Eligibility

Photo: Nyttend (public domain), via Wikimedia Commons — The Monroe County Courthouse in Bloomington, seat of the circuit court that issued the injunction.

A Monroe County, Indiana judge granted a preliminary injunction against the NCAA on Wednesday, clearing athletes in the case to compete while their lawsuit against the association continues. A preliminary injunction is not a final ruling: courts grant it to hold a situation in place while a case is litigated, and it can be narrowed, extended or reversed before the lawsuit is resolved. The athletes’ eligibility rests on this order staying in place while the underlying case proceeds — the lawsuit itself has not been decided. Two of the athletes who brought the suit, Indiana football players Stephen Daley and Kellan Wyatt, are now cleared to play in Friday’s Big Ten opener.

What the court did

Monroe County Circuit Court judge Kara E. Krothe granted the preliminary injunction in the lawsuit Daley and Wyatt filed against the NCAA. As Inside the Hall reproduced it from Bloomington Herald-Times reporter Mike Niziolek’s report of the court record: “Monroe County Circuit Court judge Kara E. Krothe has granted a preliminary injunction in the lawsuit Stephen Daley, Kellan Wyatt filed against the NCAA, they along with the other student-athletes in the case are now eligible for competition, per court records.” The Indiana Daily Student separately reported the ruling — and, unlike the court-records report above, quoted the injunction itself directly.

The Daily Hoosier has since published the full text of Judge Krothe’s order, attributed to that outlet. This article does not print a case or cause number.

According to the Indiana Daily Student’s account of the injunction, the court wrote: “In short, all athletes are granted five years of eligibility under both the Old Manual and the New Manual.” IDS quotes the injunction further: “The Court finds that Plaintiffs may compete: (1) under the express terms of the 2026-27 Manual; and (2) because the NCAA violated its obligations to them under the 2025-26 Manual.” These are IDS’s quotations of the order, not this outlet’s own reading of it — the order has not been obtained independently for this article.

The heart of the case

Per IDS’s reporting on the injunction, Krothe believes the NCAA misled the plaintiffs with an October 2025 memo stating it would not adopt the five-for-five rule “anytime soon” and that eligibility rules would not change in the 2025-26 or 2026-27 academic years. The plaintiffs acted on that memo, IDS reports, including by signing professional contracts.

IDS also lays out the case’s timeline: a Sept. 14 hearing, after which Krothe gave both sides until Sept. 17 to submit proposed findings. The ruling came six days later, on Wednesday.

Besides Daley and Wyatt, IDS names four other Indiana athletes as plaintiffs in the case: Sam Alexis (men’s basketball), Avry Tatum (volleyball), Owen McDonald (men’s swimming) and Zalán Sárkány (men’s swimming).

What the injunction does

Per The Daily Hoosier, the injunction prohibits the NCAA from excluding Daley, Wyatt and Alexis from the five-year eligibility rule the NCAA passed this summer. All three are members of the class of 2022, who would be eligible for a fifth year of competition if that rule applied to them. The injunction is in effect until the trial can be heard.

The Daily Hoosier also reports that the plaintiffs’ attorneys raised a new argument in the case: that the NCAA rules manual does not specifically exclude members of the class of 2022 from the five-year rule.

What it changes this week

The Daily Hoosier describes Daley and Wyatt as key players on Indiana’s 2025 team before both suffered injuries. Both were forced to miss the Western Kentucky game while Krothe considered the case, and both are now expected to play Friday, when Indiana opens Big Ten conference play against Northwestern at Memorial Stadium. “You know, sure will help if we have Wyatt and Daley,” IU coach Curt Cignetti said after the team’s win over Western Kentucky, according to The Daily Hoosier. Per IDS, the injunction makes the plaintiffs eligible to play until a trial is held, likely preserving their eligibility through the end of the football season, barring an NCAA appeal.

The rule at issue

The case concerns the NCAA’s age-based eligibility framework for 2026-27, which reporting has called the “five-for-five” rule. The NCAA’s own eligibility-center page states that student-athletes “who meet all eligibility requirements and enter college no later than the academic year after their 19th birthday generally will have up to five years of eligibility,” and adds that this “does not guarantee five years for all student-athletes, particularly those who delay enrollment.”

Precedent and what’s next

The Daily Hoosier reports that former Indiana football player Louis Moore won a similar preliminary injunction about a year ago, and the trial in his case had not begun by the end of that football season. The outlet also reports that the NCAA can and will likely appeal Wednesday’s ruling, and that the association has successfully stayed similar injunctions in the past until an appeal could be heard.

What the NCAA has said

The NCAA’s own newsroom carried nothing about the ruling as of a check of its site today, Sept. 23, 2026.

How many athletes the ruling covers

The Indiana Daily Student reported the injunction as covering “a group of 97 student-athletes,” and Inside the Hall reports the same figure; ESPN describes it more loosely as covering Daley, Wyatt “and dozens of other athletes.” Krothe’s order itself, as quoted by IDS, refers to the plaintiffs collectively without stating a headcount in the quoted language, so 97 is IDS’s and Inside the Hall’s own reported count rather than a number drawn directly from the order’s text — not a contradiction with ESPN’s looser “dozens,” just a different level of precision.

This article is current as of Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2026.