Two lawsuits filed for college athletes seeking to eliminate limitations on N.C.A.A. scholarships cleared a hurdle Friday when a federal judge, Claudia Wilken, found that the suits, known as the Jenkins and Alston cases, could proceed as class actions.
The Jenkins case is seen by some as the more threatening to the status quo. It seeks an order barring the N.C.A.A. and several top conferences from jointly regulating scholarship limits for the most prominent players in football and men’s basketball. The case, some say, could lead to a free market for those athletes.
In the so-called O’Bannon case, Judge Wilken found last year that N.