University of Chicago Early Decision Lawsuit: Claims and Plaintiffs

The University of Chicago is one of 32 selective private colleges named in a federal antitrust class action filed on August 8, 2025, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. The case, D’Amico v. Consortium on Financing Higher Education, accuses the schools of conspiring through their binding Early Decision programs to inflate tuition and hold down financial aid. The University of Chicago Early Decision lawsuit, as it is often shorthanded, is still at the pleadings stage: the defendants have moved to dismiss, and oral argument on that motion is scheduled for May 1, 2026.¹

What the Complaint Alleges

The plaintiffs, represented by Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll and Langer Grogan & Diver, claim the 32 defendant schools entered into a horizontal agreement — an arrangement among competitors — not to recruit or admit students who had already been accepted through Early Decision at another defendant institution. The complaint calls this a “classic per se violation” of Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act, framing it as illegal customer allocation: each school gets exclusive access to the students it admits early, and those students lose the ability to compare offers.²

Central to the theory is how the “binding” nature of ED is presented to applicants. Students who apply Early Decision must agree to attend if admitted and to withdraw all other applications. The plaintiffs say the schools describe this commitment as a “legally binding” contract, even though the schools themselves acknowledge it is not enforceable in court and functions, at most, as an honor pledge. The suit says schools use the “patina of legal documents” and require co-signatures from parents and school counselors to pressure applicants into compliance.³

Two application platforms, Common Application Inc. and Scoir Inc. (which operates the Coalition Application), are named as co-defendants. According to the complaint, both platforms prevent a student from submitting more than one Early Decision application, and schools using these platforms share lists of ED-admitted students so competitor institutions can pull those names from their own applicant pools. The complaint cites a 2006 Yale Law Journal article by Ruby Shellaway (now Vanderbilt University’s general counsel) to describe how the mechanism works: each school circulates a list its competitors enforce, guaranteeing an admitted student cannot negotiate elsewhere because their name has already been removed.²

The Consortium on Financing Higher Education (COFHE), an unincorporated group of elite private colleges headquartered at MIT, is also named. The plaintiffs allege COFHE served as the vehicle for sharing admissions and financial aid data among its members, most of whom overlap with the defendant schools.⁴ COFHE closed on December 31, 2025, after a membership vote during its 50th anniversary year.⁵

How This Allegedly Raises the Price of College

The financial theory in the complaint is straightforward. Because Early Decision applicants must commit before they can see competing aid offers, schools have no reason to bid against each other for those students. That, the plaintiffs argue, eliminates price competition and lets institutions charge more and offer less generous aid than an open market would allow. Regular Decision applicants are said to be harmed too: with so many seats already filled by ED admits, the remaining pool shrinks and leverage disappears for everyone else.⁶

The complaint emphasizes that the harm falls hardest on middle- and lower-income families, who most need to compare aid packages. Students who can comfortably pay full tuition have less reason to care about the commitment; those who cannot must gamble on a single school’s generosity. Schools that raise tuition without using Early Decision themselves benefit as well, the plaintiffs say, because the inflated pricing at ED schools provides “cover” for broader increases.³

Who Is Suing

The named plaintiffs include Alayna D’Amico, a recent Wesleyan graduate and the lead plaintiff; Bram Silbert, also a Wesleyan graduate who was admitted through Early Decision in 2018 and paid full cost of attendance through his May 2023 graduation; Bella “Jude” Robinson, a Vassar student admitted ED in 2021 who received a package of grants, loans, and work-study and says they could not negotiate better terms; and Max Miller, a Washington University in St. Louis student admitted Regular Decision in 2022 who received no aid and paid full price.⁴

They are seeking class certification on behalf of all students who enrolled at one of the 32 defendant schools in the past four years and whose education was not fully covered by grants. That class, the plaintiffs estimate, would include “tens of thousands of members, at minimum.”³ A University of Chicago student who paid tuition during that window and did not receive a full grant would fall within the proposed class.

The Other 31 Schools

Alongside the University of Chicago, the defendants are Amherst College, Barnard College, Bowdoin College, Brown University, Bryn Mawr College, Carleton College, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Duke University, Emory University, Haverford College, Johns Hopkins University, Macalester College, Middlebury College, Mount Holyoke College, Northwestern University, Oberlin College, Pomona College, Rice University, Smith College, Swarthmore College, Trinity College, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Rochester, Vanderbilt University, Vassar College, Washington University in St. Louis, Wellesley College, Wesleyan University, and Williams College.⁷

Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and MIT are not defendants. Some are COFHE members but do not use binding Early Decision (Harvard and Yale use non-binding Early Action, for example).

Where the Case Stands

The defendant universities have filed a joint motion to dismiss. They argue the complaint contains no “smoking gun” evidence of an actual agreement and that the schools’ parallel use of Early Decision reflects independent, rational decisions rather than a conspiracy. They point to non-defendant institutions like Harvard, Yale, and MIT that also participate in COFHE or use similar admissions practices, saying this provides an “obvious alternative explanation” for the pattern.¹

The schools also argue the plaintiffs improperly treat lawful vertical agreements between a student and a single school as evidence of a horizontal conspiracy among schools. On the substance, they contend any restraint from Early Decision should be evaluated under the more permissive “rule of reason” standard rather than treated as a per se violation, because the programs have “facially procompetitive benefits.” And they maintain that students choose the binding path voluntarily and are not obligated to accept offers that would cause financial hardship.¹

Oral argument on the motion is set for May 1, 2026. That ruling will decide whether the case moves into discovery or is dismissed at the threshold.

What the Plaintiffs Want

The relief sought is broad. The plaintiffs are asking for an injunction permanently blocking the defendants from using binding Early Decision, monetary damages for students who overpaid tuition, and what they describe as “broad structural reforms” to how these colleges conduct admissions and deliver financial aid.⁶ Because the claims are brought under the Sherman Act, any damages could be trebled under federal antitrust law.

The Federal Antitrust History Behind the Case

The private suit did not appear out of nowhere. In April 2018, the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division sent preservation letters to several colleges — among them Amherst, Williams, Middlebury, Wesleyan, Wellesley, and Pomona — demanding they retain records of any agreements to share the identities of accepted ED students.⁸ That inquiry was part of a broader probe into the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC), whose ethics code then restricted member schools from recruiting students who had already committed elsewhere through ED.

In December 2019, the DOJ sued NACAC and simultaneously entered a consent decree requiring the organization to eliminate three rules the department deemed anticompetitive, including the rule limiting recruitment of ED applicants. NACAC members had already voted to remove those provisions three months earlier.⁹ The consent decree permanently barred NACAC from reinstating similar rules and required enhanced antitrust compliance training.¹⁰ The 2019 action addressed NACAC as an industry group but did not directly challenge the schools’ own use of binding ED or their alleged list-sharing practices. D’Amico targets that school-level behavior directly, and how the court handles the motion to dismiss will set the terms for whether the schools have to defend it on the merits.

1
Archer Law. Early Decision Admissions Anti-Trust Case Scheduled for Oral Argument
2
Cohen Milstein. Early Decision Antitrust Litigation
3
Higher Ed Dive. 32 Colleges Accused of Using Early Decision To Drive Up Costs
4
Cohen Milstein. Complaint, D’Amico v. Consortium on Financing Higher Education
5
MIT. Consortium on Financing Higher Education
6
Cohen Milstein. Students File Landmark Lawsuit Alleging Elite Colleges Conspired To Present Early Decision as Binding, Inflate Tuition
7
Forbes. Lawsuit Accuses 32 Elite Colleges of Early Decision Admissions Conspiracy
8
Inside Higher Ed. Justice Department Starts Investigation Into Early Decision Admissions
9
U.S. Department of Justice. Justice Department Files Antitrust Case and Simultaneous Settlement Requiring Elimination of Anticompetitive Restraints
10
Federal Register. United States v. National Association for College Admission Counseling, Proposed Final Judgment