New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady is required to serve a four-game suspension after all, according to a decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.  In National Football League Management Council v. National Football League Players Association, the court vacated a district court decision holding that the National Football League (League) Commissioner improperly exercised discretion under the collective bargaining agreement in issuing the suspension.  

 

As a general matter, which the Second Circuit clearly noted in its decision, "a federal court's review of labor arbitration awards is narrowly circumscribed and highly deferential ? indeed, among the most deferential in the law.  [The Second Circuit's] role is not to determine for ourselves whether Brady participated in a scheme to deflate footballs or whether a suspension imposed by the Commissioner should have been for three games or five games or none at all.  Nor is it our role to second-guess the arbitrator's procedural rulings.   Our obligation is limited to determining whether the arbitration proceedings and award met the minimum legal standards established by the Labor Management Relations Act ?."  

 

In this case, the Commissioner's authority to impose discipline was established to be broad under the terms of the applicable collective bargaining agreement (hereinafter "CBA").  The CBA established that all disputes involving action taken against a player by the Commissioner "for conduct detrimental to the integrity of, or public confidence in, the game of professional football" would be processed in three steps:  (1) The Commissioner will promptly send written notice of his action to the player; (2) The player or the National Football League Players Association (hereinafter "NFLPA") may appeal the decision in writing to the Commissioner within three business days following the written notification; and (3) An arbitration hearing would be held thereafter, wherein the Commissioner may serve as hearing officer at his discretion.  

 

After following the foregoing steps, including the completion of an arbitration hearing, the Commissioner determined that a disciplinary suspension was proper where Brady participated in a scheme to deflate footballs to a pressure below the permissible range before the 2015 American Football Conference Championship Game.  The parties subsequently sought judicial review of the decision, and a federal district court vacated the award on the grounds that Brady was not given notice that his conduct was prohibited and punishable by suspension, and that the manner that the arbitration was conducted deprived Brady of fundamental fairness.  The League disagreed with the court's holding and further appealed to the Second Circuit. 

 

On review, the Second Circuit reasoned that Brady was provided with adequate notice that this kind of discipline was proper for such an infraction because, among other things, the NFLPA's reliance on the organization's Player Policies was misplaced where such rules fail to address tampering or deflating balls.  Because the CBA gave the Commissioner such broad authority to address misconduct that could undermine the integrity of the game, the court held that this language was sufficient to meet the notice requirement.  

 

With respect to the argument that the arbitrator's evidentiary rulings deprived Brady of fundamental fairness, the court noted that in general, "procedural questions that arise during arbitration, such as which witnesses to hear and which evidence to receive or exclude, are left to the sound discretion of the arbitrator and should not be second-guessed by the courts."  The record showed that the arbitrator's evidentiary rulings did not violate fundamental fairness where the evidence that was excluded was deemed collateral to the arbitration's central issue of whether Brady had engaged in conduct detrimental to the League.  

 

In light of these conclusions, the Second Circuit held that the lower court decision should be reversed and that the case should be remanded with instructions for the district court to confirm the arbitration award.  National Football League Management Council v. National Football League Players Association