Appeals Court Denies Tom Brady’s Request For Rehearing, Expected To Appeal To Supreme Court

Update:

Ian Rapoport of NFL Media reports that Tom Brady is expected to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court at some point in the near future.

Tom Gies, a management side labor lawyer with Crowell & Moring, tells Will Brinson of CBS Sports that while Brady is likely to appeal his suspension from the NFL to the Supreme Court, the odds of them hearing the case are “very, very low.”

“While one would never say never, the chances of this getting heard by the Supreme Court are very, very low,” Gies said. “Supreme Court review is discretionary. The Court decides to hear less than five percent of the cases that are filed. The typical reason the Court would grant a case — what lawyers call a ‘circuit split’ — doesn’t seem to be present here.”

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The NFL Players Association has released a statement regarding Tom Brady’s appeal for a rehearing being denied by the Second Circuit Court.

“The NFL Players Association is a labor Union that protects the rights of all of its members and pursues any violations of those rights by any means necessary. We are disappointed with the decision denying a rehearing, as there were clear violations of our collective bargaining agreement by the NFL and Commissioner Roger Goodell.
 
Despite today’s result, the track record of this League office when it comes to matters of player discipline is bad for our business and bad for our game. We have a broken system that must be fixed.
 
We will review all of our options carefully on behalf of Tom Brady and all NFL players.”

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The second circuit court of appeals has denied Tom Brady’s request for a rehearing, leaving his four-game suspension in place, per Albert Breer of TheMMQB.com.

“Appellees, National Football League Players Association and Tom Brady, filed a petition for panel rehearing, or, in the alternative, for rehearing en banc. The panel that determined the appeal has considered the request for panel rehearing, and the active members of the Court have considered the request for rehearing en banc.

“It is hereby ordered that the petition is denied.”

This means that Brady’s only other option would be appeal his case to the Supreme Court. Previous reports have said that the odds are against the Supreme Court hearing a case of this nature, so we’ll have to see where it goes from here.

Back in April, U.S. Appeals court reinstated Brady’s four-game suspension, but he wasn’t willing to accept the ruling and appealed to the second circuit court.

Should Brady’s suspension stand, the Patriots first four opponents for the 2016 season include:

• Week 1: Cardinals
• Week 2: Dolphins
• Week 3: Texans
• Week 4: Bills

In total, Brady stands to lose $235,294 by serving the four-game suspension, per Spotrac.

Previous reports had said that the Patriots were bracing for Brady to lose his Deflategate appeal and serve a four-game suspension, so this may not come as a surprise to them.

Brady can still participate in offseason workouts, training camp and the preseason before serving his ban.

This, of course, means that Jimmy Garoppolo is now in line to start the first four games of the season.

Brady, 38, stands to make a base salary of just $1 million over the next two years after he agreed to a restructured deal that included a $28 million signing bonus.

Brady and the Patriots clearly reworked his contract preemptively in order to limit the salary losses from this ban.

In 2015, Brady appeared in all 16 games for the Patriots and threw for 4,770 yards while completing 64.4 percent of his passes to go along with 36 touchdowns and seven interceptions.