Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announced Friday that he has joined a multistate federal antitrust lawsuit over the NCAA's two-time transfer rule, claiming it illegally impedes college athletes' ability to control their education and profit from their name, image and likeness (NIL).

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) allows athletes to transfer between Division 1 schools once without consequence, but if they transfer twice, they must sit out a year of competition.

A trial date has yet to be set in the lawsuit filed in the Northern District of West Virginia by Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost. Several other states and the District of Columbia have joined the claim.

The landscape of college athletics changed in July 2021 when the NCAA allowed students to profit from their name, image and likeness. Star athletes can make hundreds of thousands of dollars and, in some cases, millions off their NIL.

Before 2021, the one-year waiting period after a transfer applied to every move between schools. In 2021, the NCAA automatically exempted first-time transfers from the benching. But the NCAA requires two-time transfers to apply for waivers or sit out a season. The lawsuit said the NCAA has inconsistently denied waivers without legitimate reasons.

In December, U.S. District Judge John Preston Bailey in Wheeling, W. Va., prohibited the NCAA from enforcing the rule, allowing two-time transfers to play immediately. The order runs through the current school year.

In a response memo opposing the judge's order, the NCAA said the state attorneys general failed to show that students suffer irreparable harm under the current rule. Instead, the states "would like student-athletes to freely change schools whenever they want with immediate eligibility" with the attorneys general deciding the rules on athletic eligibility rather than the NCAA, the memo said.

The NCAA defends the waiting period as promoting academic well-being and athletic amateurism. The lawsuit said the harm done by the rule exceeds the benefit. A one-year waiting period could be devastating for athletes seeking to transfer to schools that better suit them, Ellison said.

"Banning athletes from competing for a year after they transfer schools a second time is arbitrary, unjust, and in my opinion, illegal," Ellison said in a news release. "I am proud to be standing up for student athletes and fighting the NCAA's senseless restriction on their ability to compete."

Ellison noted that a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general joined the lawsuit including those from Colorado, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.