ACC lawsuit vs. Florida State to proceed in North Carolina
The ACC won the opening round of litigation against Florida State.
A North Carolina judge denied most of FSU’s arguments to dismiss the conference’s case. Instead, the league’s lawsuit against the Seminoles will proceed in Charlotte, even as FSU pursues a separate case in Leon County.
“(The) nature of the case and the applicable law strongly favor allowing this matter to proceed in North Carolina,” chief business court judge, Louis A. Bledsoe III, wrote Thursday.
Bledsoe’s 76-page opinion rejected one of FSU’s most compelling arguments: the idea that the ACC did not follow its own protocols when it sued Florida State in December. The conference filed its complaint without a vote by its member schools. It was a preemptive act because the Seminoles were set to file their lawsuit against the ACC the next day. The conference vote didn’t happen until a special Jan. 12 meeting.
Bledsoe ruled that the after-the-fact approval was enough to ratify the complaint. Therefore, “the ACC was properly authorized to bring this litigation,” the judge wrote.
In fact, Bledsoe later wrote, the ACC is a proper plaintiff in this dispute because it risked being harmed by FSU challenging the conference’s contracts: “The parties did not simply race to the courthouse to resolve their dispute over the agreements’ terms; to the contrary, the ACC sued because the FSU Board’s alleged breach of those agreements was a practical certainty that threatened the ACC with imminent and unavoidable injury as a result.”
The lawsuits center on FSU’s potential exit from the ACC. The Seminoles want to explore an exit without paying as much as $572 million to leave. The conference contends that FSU signed contracts with financial stipulations that last as long as 2036.
The opinion agreed with at least part of the conference’s claim. Bledsoe wrote that FSU can’t challenge some of its contracts with the ACC because it has been accepting money from the league for years.
The judge also rejected Florida State’s claim of sovereign immunity. That’s because FSU’s actions in North Carolina (like playing games in the state) are commercial activities, not governmental ones.
“We are pleased with today’s decision, which confirms North Carolina courts are the proper place to enforce the ACC’s agreements and bylaws,” the conference said in a statement. “We remain committed to acting in the best interests of the league’s members and will see this process through to protect and advance the ACC.”
FSU did succeed on one count: Bledsoe dismissed the ACC’s claim that the Seminoles breached their fiduciary duties to the league.
The tension between FSU and the ACC began brewing long before both sides asked courts to intervene. The Seminoles have grumbled privately about the conference’s middling financial status for years. Their concerns became public in a February 2023 board of trustees meeting. That’s when FSU looked over financial projections and athletic director Michael Alford said: “At the end of the day for Florida State to compete nationally, something has to change moving forward.”
The North Carolina court did not rule yet on another point of contention between the sides: confidentiality. The ACC and ESPN want their contracts sealed to protect what they say are trade secrets — things like specific language and financial figures. FSU has argued that they’re public records with a major impact on the finances of public institutions like FSU and North Carolina.
Thursday’s ruling came 13 days after that Charlotte court held its first hearing in the case. Leon County is scheduled to have the first hearing on FSU’s suit Tuesday.
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