Here is my writeup of the decision to move jurisdiction to NY for Brady. And it has bigger impact beyond this case (if Pats fans can believe that :)

A Minnesota federal court judge this morning ordered the NFLPA’s lawsuit, filed just yesterday against the NFL over the suspension of Tom Brady, transferred to Manhattan federal court, where the league had earlier pre-emptively filed to enforce the decision.
It is a critical decision not just for Brady and the NFLPA, which has found much success in the labor friendly Minnesota court, but overall league legal issues if cases can now get tried in New York rather the Midwest.
“This Court…perceives no reason for this action to proceed in Minnesota,” Judge Richard Kyle wrote today. “On the same day the Award was issued, Respondent National Football League…commenced an action against the Union in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York seeing to confirm the Award.
The “New York Action triggers application of the first filed rule,” the Judge ruled. That gives precedence to the first party to the courthouse steps.
Perhaps more important to the future of NFLPA-NFL legal disputes, Judge Kyle basically took a meat cleaver to the union’s rationale for having disputes heard in Minnesota because they had been there before.
“Carried to its logical conclusion, accepting the Union’s premise would mean that a court that had decided, for example, a large corporation had engaged in racial discrimination would be the appropriate venue for every future racial discrimination case against that corporation, no matter where the employee was located or where the alleged discrimination had occurred,” he wrote. “Venue simply cannot be predicated on such a thin reed.”
For Brady, the move to New York is sure to be seen as a setback, although given Kyle’s decision today, it may have been best for the QB not to have been before the Republican appointed judge. The New York judge chosen for the case is a Clinton appointee.

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