THE UNDIVIDED COURT:

"Put simply, this suit involves admitted horizontal price fixing in a market where the defendants exercise monopoly control," Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the court.

The conservative justice, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, wrote that it was "unclear exactly what the NCAA seeks."

"To the extent it means to propose a sort of judicially ordained immunity from the terms of the Sherman Act for its restraints of trade -- that we should overlook its restrictions because they happen to fall at the intersection of higher education, sports, and money -- we cannot agree," Gorsuch wrote.

The outcome was largely expected following oral argument in March. The decision upheld an injunction imposed by a federal district court that barred the NCAA from limiting "compensation and benefits related to education." The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals earlier approved of the injunction.

In allowing the injunction, Gorsuch wrote that the NCAA can ask lawmakers to carve out an exception for it.

"The NCAA is free to argue that, 'because of the special characteristics of [its] particular industry,' it should be exempt from the usual operation of the antitrust laws -- but that appeal is 'properly addressed to Congress,'" Gorsuch wrote.

"Nor has Congress been insensitive to such requests. It has modified the antitrust laws for certain industries in the past, and it may do so again in the future," Gorsuch wrote. "But until Congress says otherwise, the only law it has asked us to enforce is the Sherman Act, and that law is predicated on one assumption alone -- 'competition is the best method of allocating resources' in the Nation's economy."

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