The Florida Supreme Court on Thursday declined to take up a request by the Atlantic Coast Conference to pause a lawsuit filed by Florida State University in a battle about sports media rights.
The Supreme Court, as is common, did not explain its reasons for denying the request to review the issue. The ACC went to the Supreme Court last month after the 1st District Court of Appeal rejected a stay of the lawsuit.
Thursday’s decision was the latest twist in more than a year of legal wrangling between the North Carolina-based conference and Florida State. That wrangling has included dueling lawsuits, with the conference filing a case in North Carolina in December 2023, one day before Florida State filed its lawsuit in Leon County.
FSU has essentially contended in the battle that the ACC has shortchanged its members through television contracts and that the school would face exorbitant financial penalties if it leaves. But the ACC has argued that the university entered a contract that granted media rights to the conference.
The issue at the Supreme Court centered on arguments by the conference that FSU’s lawsuit in Leon County should be put on hold while the ACC’s lawsuit in North Carolina plays out. The conference has cited a legal concept known as the “principle of priority.”
But Leon County Circuit Judge John Cooper and a panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal rejected the conference’s arguments about a stay and the principle of priority.
In its brief last month asking the Supreme Court to take up the issue, the conference painted the issues in broad terms.
“The First District’s decision, which abrogates the principle of priority and sets North Carolina and Florida on a jurisdictional collision course, may present the most important federalism issue that any member of this (Supreme) Court has, to date, had the privilege to consider,” wrote the ACC’s attorneys, who include former Florida Supreme Court Justice Alan Lawson. “Contrary to decades of precedent, the decision undermines Florida’s role in our federal constitutional order and the stability and predictability of our law in ways that will profoundly destabilize our justice system if not corrected.”
In rejecting a stay, Cooper said the ACC’s lawsuit in North Carolina was an “anticipatory filing” that the conference made after finding out the university planned to file a lawsuit in Florida. In a Feb. 11 brief filed at the Supreme Court, FSU said Cooper’s decision on the stay should stand.
“Trial judges have broad discretion on stays,” FSU’s attorneys wrote. “And appellate courts must defer to the trial judge’s determinations unless a legal principle has been traduced or no reasonable person could agree with the call. The First District faithfully applied Florida law to this ‘virtual classic case of anticipatory filing’ in declining to find an abuse of discretion (by Cooper).”
Thursday’s decision does not resolve the underlying legal battle. Documents posted on the Leon County clerk of court’s website indicate that former FSU presidents John Thrasher and Eric Barron and former Athletic Director David Coburn were scheduled to give depositions last week.
