NEW YORK — A federal judge said he will rule Tuesday on an emergency request from attorneys for Dallas Cowboys star Ezekiel Elliott to stop the running back’s six-game suspension over domestic violence allegations.
U.S. District Judge Paul Crotty heard arguments from lawyers on both sides as the NFL Players Association scrambled to keep Elliott on the field after a federal appeals court last week overturned an injunction that had stopped the league’s suspension.
Elliott, last year’s NFL rushing leader as a rookie, is on the suspended list. The Cowboys play at San Francisco on Sunday.
Attorney Daniel Nash, arguing for the NFL, accused Elliott’s legal team of seeking relief from courts in Texas to evade courts in New York and the effect of the April 2016 ruling that reinstated a four-game suspension of New England quarterback Tom Brady in the “Deflategate” scandal.
Attorney Jeffrey Kessler, representing the NFLPA, asked Crotty to prevent enforcement of the suspension for two weeks so that the Southern District of New York judge assigned to the case — Katherine Polk Failla — can return from a vacation and rule. Crotty concluded the hearing by saying he’d look at the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision in the Brady case before ruling by the end of the day on the union’s request for a temporary restraining order.
Nash warned Crotty that allowing the union to continue to delay the suspension would invite “every player who’s suspended” to go to court for relief.
“They know under the Brady decision they have no chance of success. None,” Nash said.
Kessler said the harm to a player’s short career was serious when a suspension is served.
“He can never get that back,” Kessler said, arguing that the irreparable harm — among issues of law considered before a temporary restraining order is granted — faced by a player is much greater than harm claimed by the league when a suspension is delayed.
In their request for the temporary restraining order, Elliott’s attorneys said NFL procedure required rosters to be set by 4 p.m. Eastern time Tuesday. NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said there is no such deadline from the league’s perspective.
NFLPA attorneys, working on Elliott’s behalf, also said the league had already informed Elliott that he couldn’t practice or play this week. The Cowboys returned to work Tuesday after their bye week and will have their first full practice Wednesday.
Elliott was suspended in August by Commissioner Roger Goodell after the league concluded following a yearlong investigation that he had several physical confrontations in the summer of 2016 with Tiffany Thompson, his girlfriend at the time. Prosecutors in Columbus, Ohio, decided not to pursue the case in the city where Elliott starred for Ohio State, citing conflicting evidence, but the NFL did its own investigation and announced the six-game punishment.
That led to weeks of court filings, with NFLPA lawyers contending that league investigators withheld key evidence from Commissioner Roger Goodell and that the appeal hearing was unfair because arbitrator Harold Henderson refused to call Goodell and Thompson as witnesses. Elliott has denied Thompson’s allegations under oath.
The NFL placed Elliott on the suspended list a day after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans overturned a Texas court’s injunction that kept Elliott on the field.
The case is shifting to New York because the New Orleans court ordered the dismissal of Elliott’s lawsuit in Texas. Depending on the outcome in New York, Elliott’s attorneys could still seek a rehearing with a larger panel of the appeals court, which they have indicated they would do.
A three-judge panel of the appeals court ruled 2-1 last week that Elliott’s attorneys filed the Texas lawsuit prematurely because the arbitrator had yet to decide on the running back’s appeal through the NFL. Elliott’s attorneys have argued in subsequent filings that the dissenting judge in New Orleans agreed with the Texas judge’s findings that the NFL appeal was unfair to Elliott.
Brady’s suspension was served more than a year after it was imposed. A federal judge ruled against the NFL and overturned the suspension, but the league won an appeal.
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