In a defeat for the N.F.L. and Commissioner Roger Goodell, a former federal judge has overturned the indefinite suspension of Ray Rice, the former Baltimore Ravens running back who was videotaped knocking out his fiancée in a hotel elevator.
The decision Friday handed down by Barbara S. Jones, a onetime district court judge, was confirmed by a member of the N.F.L. Players Association.
Jones presided over a two-day meeting, on Nov. 5 and 6, of Rice's appeal of his ban. Rice argued that he had been penalized twice for the same incident, once when Goodell suspended him for two games and fined him $500,000, and again a few months later when video of the incident was published by the website TMZ and he was suspended indefinitely.
Jones disagreed with the N.F.L.'s assessment that Rice had misrepresented the severity of the incident when he met with Goodell in June to determine the original penalty. Rather, she said, the league had punished Rice unfairly, and his ban should be overturned.
Rice, who has also filed a grievance against the Ravens for terminating his long-term contract, said he would like to return to the N.F.L., but it is unclear if any team will want to sign him given the potential negative publicity.
Either way, Jones's decision was a major setback for Goodell, who has been criticized for mishandling Rice's suspension and being insensitive to the issue of domestic violence. Some fans and columnists had called for him to resign, and several key sponsors had admonished the league for the way it handled the case in what has amounted to the biggest crisis of Goodell's eight-year tenure as commissioner.
Goodell's handling of Rice's suspension is also being investigated by Robert Mueller, the former F.B.I. director who was hired to find out what the commissioner knew about the video of Rice and when. Goodell has insisted that he had not seen the graphic video that prompted him to suspend Rice a second time. If it turns out that he had seen it, the league's owners are likely to take a dim view of his leadership.
More broadly, Goodell has come under fire for the way he has administered the N.F.L.'s personal conduct policy, which gives the commissioner broad powers to suspend players. Players have criticized Goodell for being arbitrary and opaque in the way he penalizes them. After Rice was suspend indefinitely in September, Goodell promised to overhaul the policy to make it more transparent and consistent.
The union has demanded that the league collectively bargain those changes, but thus far the league has resisted.
Goodell's fumbling in the Rice case, as well as his suspension of Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson, who was arrested and charged with beating his son, has diminished his image as a commissioner committed to cleaning up the violence in his league. As commissioner, Goodell made himself the disciplinarian in crisis after crisis that threatened to tarnish the league's image. Like other league officials before him, he made clear that his top priority as commissioner was to 'protect the shield,' a reference to the N.F.L.'s logo, and image.
He responded decisively to crises, doling out fines and suspensions for on-field incidents (hits to the head), player misbehavior (arrests, drug use, Michael Vick's dogfighting ring) and team misconduct (teams spying on opponents or offering bounties to injure them).
But many of his decisions seemed clumsy, with critics arguing that they were designed to protect the league or ease the return of players accused of misconduct. When the New England Patriots were caught filming the Jets' defensive signals, Goodell fined the team and Coach Bill Belichick but destroyed the seized videotapes before it could be determined whether the taping was part of a larger pattern that included other teams. In 2012, his suspensions of several players in the New Orleans Saints bounty case were overturned after a review by the former commissioner Paul Tagliabue, who said the facts did not support the punishments. In 2010, he suspended Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger for six games even though he was never arrested in connection with a sexual assault accusation. The suspension was later reduced to four games.
After his initial two-game ban in the Rice case drew the ire of fans and women's groups for being too lenient, Goodell acknowledged a month later that he had 'got it wrong' and announced a new policy in which first-time offenders in domestic violence cases would miss a minimum of six games. When video of Rice punching Janay Palmer, who is now his wife, became public, however, Goodell suspended him indefinitely, and the Ravens cut him from their roster.
'People expect a lot from the N.F.L. - we accept that; we embrace that,' Goodell told CBS News after the more graphic Rice video stirred new outrage against his leadership. 'That's our opportunity to make a difference, not just in the N.F.L. but in society in general.'
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