Indiana football safety Louis Moore won a court injunction against the NCAA, allowing him to play the rest of the 2025 season.
The ruling challenges the NCAA’s junior college eligibility rules, which had previously denied Moore an additional year.
Moore testified he has received $330,000 in NIL payments this season, which were at risk if he lost eligibility.
The Hoosiers’ leading tackler, safety Louis Moore, won an injunction against the NCAA in Dallas County Court that will keep him eligible for the rest of 2025 season, per a signed order from Judge Dale Tillery.
Moore challenged the NCAA’s JUCO eligibility rules after the organization denied IU’s waiver request to grant him an additional year of eligibility.
‘This isn’t just a win for Louis Moore; this is for all the student-athletes in similar situations who have been unfairly penalized by the NCAA enforcing rules that have been illegally applied to junior colleges,’ his lawyer Brian Lauten told The Bloomington Herald-Times.
Tillery adjourned the nearly five-hour hearing without issuing a decision, but later ruled in favor of an injunction after reviewing testimony and documents in the case. The injunction runs through the trial that Tillery scheduled for Jan. 29, 2026, at 8:30 a.m., a date that’s 10 days after the national title game.
The order states the NCAA is ‘enjoined from enforcing the Five-Year Rule as it applies to Moore’s time at a junior college.’
Moore, a Mesquite, Texas native, testified Wednesday he’s received $330,000 from IU in NIL payments this season, and an IU coach told him he could lose his scholarship and have to pay back some portion of the NIL money he received if he lost his eligibility.
According to Moore’s lawsuit, he would lose out on a “once-in-a-lifetime” NIL contract if he weren’t allowed to play in 2025, and miss an opportunity to “enhance his career and reputation by playing another year of Division I football at an NCAA major conference university that likely extends beyond the direct financial returns.”
Moore has 23 tackles (15 solo) with two interceptions and a pair of pass breakups for the 12th-ranked Hoosiers (4-0).
‘He’s done an incredible job navigating something that’s so complicated, and still leading his team in tackles and interceptions, it really speaks volumes about his maturity,’ Lauten said. ‘I’ve never been so proud to represent someone. This is a kid that’s had to fight for everything he has. I’m so glad that he gets to put this behind him.’
Moore challenged the NCAA’s JUCO eligibility rules after it denied his initial waiver request for an additional year of eligibility in June — his appeal of that ruling has since been denied — even though the organization issued a blanket waiver in December that granted athletes an extra year of eligibility in 2025-26 who ‘competed at a non-NCAA school for one or more years.’
He entered the transfer portal after spending the 2024 season at Mississippi, believing he would be eligible to play an additional season under those guidelines, having started his career at Navarro College from 2019 to 2021.
Michael Niziolek covers IU Athletics for The Herald Times, part of the USA TODAY Network.