The Washington Supreme Court has declined to hear a challenge to a ruling that Washington State and Oregon State universities are the only remaining members of the governing board of the Pacific-12 Conference.
In a short statement released today, Chief Justice Steven Gonzalez said a majority of the court’s nine justices voted to deny requests to revisit a November 2023 ruling by Whitman County Judge Gary Libey. Libey ruled the 10 Pac-12 members that have publicly announced they will be leaving for other conferences next summer have forfeited their right to decide the future of the Pac-12.
Libey had previously issued an injunction stopping the Pac-12 board from meeting, ostensibly for the purpose of deciding its future.
The University of Washington appealed that ruling directly to the Supreme Court, arguing that it and the other departing schools have the right to participate in discussions about the disbursement of conference revenues as long as they’re members of the conference.
Attorneys for WSU and OSU said that argument contradicts the past behavior of the Pac-12 board. When USC and UCLA became the first schools to announce their intentions to leave, in 2022 for the Big 10 Conference, their Pac-12 brethren immediately removed them from the conference governing board. The University of Colorado received the same treatment when it announced in 2023 that it had agreed to join the Big 12.
A Supreme Court commissioner in November stayed the Whitman County ruling until the court could review the ruling and decide whether to hear the case. That news came on Friday.
Barring any further legal obstacles, WSU and OSU now are the conference’s only remaining voting members, which means they control how the conference will be operated and its finances spent. They also apparently become responsible for its debts.
Earlier this week, WSU and OSU used their authority as the sole members to stop the conference from distributing about 15% of its annual revenue to the 12 members, about $5 million per school.
WSU and OSU plan to continue as members of what is now the Pac-2 Conference for the 2024-2025 sports season. Their football teams will partner with the Mountain West Conference to help fill their 2024 schedules. WSU will play eight MWC opponents, plus games at Oregon State, a “neutral site” Apple Cup game against the University of Washington and home games against Texas Tech and Portland State. It’s unclear how the university’s other sports teams will fill their schedules.
