The opportunity for hundreds of thousands of potential plaintiffs to participate in an antitrust lawsuit will now hinge on an appeals court’s narrow interpretation of a single issue. At stake is an award that could be in the billions.
On August 24, 2026, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit granted five universities the right to appeal a class-action certification approved in June by a district court judge. The schools — Cornell University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the University of Pennsylvania (Penn), the University of Notre Dame, and Georgetown University — represent the only defendants from the “568 Presidents Group” named in the 2022 Henry, et al. v. Brown University, et al lawsuit that have yet to agree to a settlement. After successfully gaining the right to an appeal, it doesn’t appear that they intend to give up the already protracted legal battle just yet.
The appeal is limited to whether the district court adequately analyzed expert testimony bearing on whether antitrust impact can be proved with evidence common to the class. While the financial aid antitrust settlements made by the other original defendants totaled over $300 million, a failed appeal would leave the remaining schools facing a class action with potentially over 200,000 members and at least $1.7 billion in damages.
Check the Expiration Date
Prior to 2022, a number of the nation’s most elite universities were part of a consortium called the 568 Presidential Group, named after a provision in the Improving America’s Schools Act of 1994 that allowed them to share formulas measuring the financial needs of prospective students without violating federal antitrust laws. In addition to the five named above, the other members were Northwestern University, Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University, the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Yale University, Vanderbilt University, the University of Chicago, Dartmouth College, Duke University, Emory University, and Rice University.
The schools were shielded from violating the Sherman Antitrust Act because they were required to be “need-blind” when granting financial aid awards, which meant they couldn’t base grants on whether a student required need-based financial aid or could afford the cost of attendance without assistance. This led to the filing of Henry in 2022, which accused the named schools of collusion through the “Consensus Methodology” to artificially inflate their tuition costs. The 568 provision expired in 2022, with several schools having already left the group (dubbed the “568 Cartel” by the Henry plaintiffs).
Over the ensuing years, most of the 568 schools chose to settle to end litigation. For the remaining five, things took an unwelcome turn when a June 2026 district court ruling approved class action status for Corzo v. Cornell, filed in February 2026.
Determining How Much of an Expert the Expert Is
The crux of the district court’s ruling centered on expert testimony given during a Daubert hearing in 2025. The defense sought to exclude the testimony of three experts, including Dr. Hal Singer. Singer presented a regression model to establish a causal nexus between the alleged price-fixing conspiracy and suppressed financial aid offers. It showed that defendant universities suppressed financial aid offers to students in years when the school was a member of the 568 Cartel.
The universities argued that Singer’s data model was “unthethered from the challenged conduct and common sense” and included students who paid no tuition classified as “overcharged.” They also questioned the model’s “wild and inexplicable year-to-year swings” and expressed concern that the district court had not “adequately analyzed expert testimony” as a true barometer of whether class action status should have been granted.
That’s the matter under consideration before the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. The court may soon determine whether the legal path chosen by the five holdouts will succeed.
