Dallas Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott was granted a temporary restraining order, effectively putting his six-game suspension on pause until Oct. 30.
Judge Paul Crotty of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Southern District of New York granted the TRO Tuesday on the same day the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans denied the NFL Players Association’s request for a recall mandate.
Five days earlier the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had overturned a Texas court’s injunction that had kept Elliott off the suspension list.
Elliott was initially suspended for six games due to domestic violence on Aug. 11 after the NFL conducted a private investigation over Elliott’s alleged incident in July 2017.
During the hearing on Tuesday, Crotty said he was inclined to defer the case to the presiding judge, Katherine Polk Failla, who Crotty was covering for while she is on vacation. Judge Failla is more familiar with the case, according to Crotty.
Arguing for the NFL was attorney Daniel Nash, who accused Elliott’s legal team of using the Texas courts to avoid the courts in New York and the precedence of the April 2016 ruling that reinstated New England quarterback Tom Brady’s four-game suspension for the “Deflategate” scandal.
“He can never get that back,” said attorney Jeffrey Kessler, representing the players’ union. Kessler argued that the irreversible harm faced by a player during a suspension is much greater than the harm claimed by the league when a suspension is delayed.
NFL Network legal analyst Gabe Feldman explained that Elliot and the NLFPA are “challenging the process the league undertook to suspend Elliott – not the factual conclusions from its investigation.”
Elliott originally had no charges brought against him by the Columbus City Attorney’s Office, who declined to approve charges in this matter due to conflicting and inconsistent information across all incidents resulting in insufficient evidence to support the charges. However, the NFL said they discovered enough evidence in their investigation to warrant the suspension.
Feldman went on to say:
“This is part of the ongoing fight between the players association and the league over the power of the commissioner. We have seen the NFL go to great lengths in court to affirm and strengthen and maintain they believe in what they collectively bargained for. And we’ve seen the players association fight and say that the commissioner has overreached and they want to protect the rights of the players. [The NFL] doesn’t want precedent out there that says a court can interfere with the commissioner’s decision or with an arbitrator’s decision.”
This is reminiscent to Tom Brady’s “Deflategate” trial, where the battle became about Commissioner Roger Goodell’s power defined in the collective bargaining agreement instead of the facts of the accusations.
Paul Helmers
Reporter