An Alabama federal judge has been assigned the ongoing legal dispute being the Southeastern Conference and Louisiana State University.

Early Thursday, the SEC filed a lawsuit in the Northern District of Alabama against the school and Lane Kiffin himself over LSU’s push to add several players who spent the summer in training camp with NFL teams.

The filing surfaced hours later during a preliminary injunction hearing in Baton Rouge, where a state judge was weighing whether to keep in place the temporary restraining order that cleared those players to return to college football.

Just after 8 p.m. Thursday, the judge sided with the players and extended the order.

Now, U.S. District Judge Annemarie Carney Axon has been assigned the case.

Judge Axon presided over former Alabama basketball player Kai Spears’ defamation lawsuit against the New York Times, which was a $9.25 million victory for Spears at trial, and on Monday entered final judgment trimming the award to $4.75 million under Alabama’s punitive damages cap.

A Trump appointee, Judge Axon earned both her bachelor’s and law degrees from the University of Alabama.

In the court filing, the SEC accused LSU of a “deliberate and coordinated campaign” to specifically recruit players who had signed NFL contracts. The lawsuit seeks declaratory and injunctive relief and argues that LSU is violating the conference’s First Amendment right of expressive association.

Judge Axon earned both her bachelor’s and law degrees from The University of Alabama.

Whether or not the lawsuit ends in the conference being allowed to enforce its own rules remains to be seen, but folks around the state of Alabama – as well as across the entire South and perhaps the whole nation – will be watching closely as the conference goes to war with one of its member institutions.