The former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice was successful in his appeal to the NFL for his indefinite suspension from the league for violating its domestic violence policy. The NFL announced that Ray Rice’s suspension had been vacated on Friday, November 28. Rice made statements apologizing for and acknowledging the severity of his actions that were widely publicized because of footage of Rice hitting his wife in an elevator in Atlantic City. Race Rice said that he would continue to work through his issues and learn from his past mistakes. Although his suspension has been lifted, Ray Rice is no longer signed to a specific team. The lifted suspension simply gives Rice the opportunity to be recruited to a team in the NFL. But this task will be difficult given his past behavior. Any team that Rice wants to play for will have to consider the consequences of signing a player whose domestic-violence case has been so highly publicized.
The reason that Ray Rice’s suspension was lifted was because the judge decided that Rice’s second suspension was ‘arbitrary’. In September, only a few hours after the Ravens fired Rice from their team, NFL Commissioner Rodger Goodnell announced that the NFL was going to lengthen Rice’s suspension from two games to an indefinite period. The judge believed that because Rice did not mislead the commissioner and because there was no new incriminating information or evidence to provide reason to a lengthened suspension, that the increased suspension was an arbitrary decision. The judge said that the case was not about the number of games that Rice was suspended for but the need for Commissioner Goodell to be “fair and consistent” (CNN) in his discipline. A spokesman for the NFL, Greg Aiello, said that the league respects the decision made by the judge (CNN).
Source:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/28/us/ray-rice-reinstated/