Attorneys for RJ Luis Jr. filed a petition on Tuesday in state district court in East Baton Rouge Parish asking a Louisiana judge to block the SEC from punishing LSU if the player is added to the Tigers’ roster.
The legal filing represents the latest clash between collegiate athletic conferences and players dealing with the blurred lines between professional contracts and college eligibility. Luis, the 2025 Big East Player of the Year with St. John’s, played three seasons of college basketball before declaring for the 2025 NBA draft. Though he went undrafted, he was briefly under contract with Utah and Boston without appearing in a regular-season game.
The Legal Battle Lines in Baton Rouge
In late August, Judge Ronald R. Johnson granted a preliminary injunction against the NCAA, which has argued that Luis is ineligible to play. Tuesday’s petition asks the same state court to go a step further by restraining the Southeastern Conference from levying penalties against Louisiana State University.
Attorneys Elliot Abrams of Raleigh, North Carolina, and Tony Clayton of Baton Rouge represent Luis exclusively rather than the university. Their filing asserts that the conference’s internal protocols remain the sole barrier keeping the athlete off the court.
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LSU has not rostered Mr. Luis, and the reason it has given is the Conference’s protocols. This court enjoined the NCAA, and everyone acting in concert or participation with it, from keeping RJ Luis Jr. off the floor at LSU this season, directly or indirectly. The Southeastern Conference’s policy is what keeps him off the floor now.
An SEC spokesman stated Tuesday that the conference had no immediate comment on the new filing.
LSU Drops Players to Avoid SEC Penalties
The SEC maintains a long-established rule prohibiting teams from adding players with major professional experience to their rosters. In September, the conference introduced updated enforcement provisions giving the commissioner authority to suspend coaches, fine universities up to half of a sport’s budget, and restrict a member school’s voting privileges on conference matters.
These strict enforcement mechanisms have already altered roster decisions in Baton Rouge. Under threat of being voted out of the SEC by fellow league members, LSU chose in early September not to add two football players—Dae’Quan Wright and Zxavian Harris—who had spent part of the offseason with NFL clubs before being recruited back to college by first-year football coach Lane Kiffin.
Those two players had previously secured a preliminary injunction against both the NCAA and the SEC from another state judge in Baton Rouge during Week 1 of the season. That legal maneuver prompted the SEC to file a federal lawsuit accusing LSU of exhibiting an “ongoing defiance of the conference’s professionalism rules” and violating the league’s First Amendment right to freedom of association.
Weighing Institutional Autonomy
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill has sharply criticized the SEC’s federal legal strategy, labeling the conference’s lawsuit “garbage” while filing legal briefs supporting LSU and urging a dismissal of the federal case in which she is named as a defendant.
Will Wade, hired last spring to coach LSU basketball for a second tenure, recruited Luis to return to the college ranks. However, the NCAA balked at restoring his eligibility because he left school for the professional draft without following specific NCAA protocols for withdrawing and retaining amateur status.
As the legal maneuvering continues in East Baton Rouge Parish, the immediate question centers on whether state judicial orders can successfully shield athletic departments from conference-level governance and sanctions.
