N.F.L. Appeals Deshaun Watson’s Six-Game Suspension

Robinson said that her decision to suspend Watson for six games was based on the penalties the league had meted out in other cases involving gender-based violence.

The league began its investigation of Watson in March 2021, when Ashley Solis, a licensed massage therapist in Houston, filed the first lawsuit against him. The women said that he assaulted or harassed them during massage appointments in 2020 and 2021, when Watson played for the Houston Texans. In a brief filed to Robinson, the league wrote that Watson had “used his status as an N.F.L. player as a pretext to engage in a premeditated pattern of predatory behavior toward multiple women.”

Watson’s case was the first handled under a new process established in the 2020 C.B.A. By assigning an arbitrator to oversee the review of facts and decide on the initial penalty, the revision aimed to stem criticisms of Goodell’s outsized and sometimes capricious power in the disciplinary process.

If Robinson had found that Watson did not violate the personal conduct policy, there would have been no discipline and neither side could appeal. But she concluded that there was enough evidence, including the accounts of four women that she said were “substantially corroborated,” to support multiple violations of the policy by Watson.

According to the C.B.A., decisions by Goodell, or his designee, are “full, final and complete” and binding on all parties, including the player.

The union may challenge the league’s appeal in federal court, as it has done over player conduct decisions in the past. One noteworthy instance came in 2015, when quarterback Tom Brady challenged his four-game suspension in the so-called Deflategate scandal. A district court judge sided with Brady, saying that Goodell exceeded his power by suspending the quarterback for his role in an alleged scheme to take air out of game balls to improve their grip. Goodell’s decision, however, was upheld in 2016 by a federal appeals court panel that affirmed his broad authority to discipline players.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/03/sports/football/nfl-appeals-deshaun-watsons-suspension.html