BIRMINGHAM — The Southeastern Conference did not just sue LSU over former NFL players. On Tuesday it named Louisiana Attorney General Elizabeth Murrill as a defendant, asked a federal judge to keep her and LSU officials from touching Thursday's membership meeting, and argued that the State of Louisiana has joined a campaign to force the league to associate with conduct its own rules forbid.
That is the real fight now. Not whether Dae'Quan Wright or Zxavian Harris dress on Saturday. Whether a private conference headquartered in Alabama can choose its members, or whether a Louisiana court order, a governor, a coach, and the state's attorney general can box the league into keeping LSU anyway.
What landed on the docket
The amended complaint in The Southeastern Conference v. Louisiana State University (N.D. Ala., 2:26-cv-01586) lists Murrill in her official capacity, along with President Wade Rousse, Athletic Director Verge Ausberry, Coach Lane Kiffin, and the individual members of the LSU Board of Supervisors. The SEC wants a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction blocking those defendants from filing or joining new suits to stop, delay, or unwind Thursday's CEO meeting.
A two-thirds vote of the conference's presidents and chancellors is what it takes to terminate a member, according to the amended complaint. The league says a Louisiana judge already tied its hands on penalties, so expulsion is what remains of its claimed First Amendment right of expressive association.
U.S. District Judge Annemarie Carney Axon set a hearing for 1 p.m. CT today at the Hugo L. Black U.S. Courthouse in Birmingham. SEC presidents and chancellors are scheduled to meet Thursday, September 10, on whether to terminate LSU as a member.
Why Murrill is in it
The filing is specific. Murrill submitted an amicus brief in the Baton Rouge players' case. She sat with plaintiffs' counsel at the injunction hearing. On September 3, she told reporters, "It's just garbage," according to On3. From the courthouse recess that same day, ESPN's Pete Thamel reported that Murrill called the merits of the SEC suit "garbage," called the timing "legal gamesmanship," and criticized Commissioner Greg Sankey for wanting to go home on a private jet. Separately, Sankey testified under oath in the Baton Rouge hearing that he earned roughly $4.8 million the previous year and had flown in on a private plane. The conference claims Murrill's acts were "in active concert" with LSU officials and Gov. Jeff Landry to override SEC governance.
NOLA.com reports the league's theory in plain language: Murrill and other Louisiana officials have been interfering with the conference's ability to regulate its members. Courthouse News notes Murrill's public response, that the claims are "garbage and frivolous," and that the state-court order lets the athletes into the transfer portal and bars the NCAA and SEC from sanctioning them for it.
That is a sovereignty argument dressed as eligibility.
The football piece is the fuse, not the case
LSU did not roster Wright and Harris for Saturday's opener against Clemson, and the door has since closed further. The Tigers filled their final two roster spots with sophomore cornerback Aidan Anding and junior defensive end Gabriel Reliford, locking the roster at the NCAA's 105-player cap and locking Wright and Harris out for the rest of the 2026 season, according to CBS Sports and ESPN. LSU did add Junior Tuihalamaka, a Notre Dame transfer who received a fifth season of eligibility under the same court ruling but never signed an NFL contract, unlike Wright and Harris. The amended complaint says none of that changes the calculus. The CEOs' consensus, the league wrote, is that LSU's continued membership is inconsistent with conference principles "whether or not LSU ever includes Harris, Wright, or other football players who are ineligible under the Professionalism Rules."
In other words: the players are already off the roster for the season, and the expulsion meeting is still on the calendar. That is the case in miniature. It was never really about two open depth-chart spots.
Kiffin is named throughout the complaint. The SEC says conference CEOs expressed "great concern" that Rousse and Ausberry have "no meaningful control" over Kiffin or the football program at LSU, language pulled directly from the filing. That is the conference telling a federal judge the flagship is not running the flagship.
What the SEC wants the judge to do
The league is asking the court to:
1. Stop LSU officials, board members, and Murrill from blocking or interfering with the September 10 meeting.
2. Stop them from using new state-court filings to undo a termination vote.
3. Declare that the First Amendment protects the conference's right to disassociate from LSU and from the conduct at issue.