Adrian Peterson lawsuit set for next month

Tom Pelissero | USA TODAY Sports

MINNEAPOLIS — The NFL Players Association's lawsuit against the NFL on behalf of banished Vikings star Adrian Peterson is scheduled to reach federal court the week after the Super Bowl.

A plaintiff's motion to vacate the arbitration award from appeals officer Harold Henderson is on the docket of U.S. District Court Judge David S. Doty at 2 p.m. on Feb. 6, courtroom deputy Connie Baker told USA TODAY Sports.

The NFLPA filed the lawsuit Dec. 15, days after appeals officer Harold Henderson upheld Commissioner Roger Goodell's decision to suspend Peterson for at least the rest of the 2014 season, with reinstatement possible no sooner than April 15.

The union faces a high burden to get the court to intervene and overturn an arbitration process that was collectively bargained.

Among other arguments in a redacted filing the NFLPA posted to its website, the union contends the decision Dec. 12 by Henderson — who worked for roughly two decades in the league office — "was rendered by an evidently partial arbitrator who exceeded the scope of his authority."

The filing ended with a request from the NFLPA and Peterson "that this Court vacate the Arbitration Award in its entirety and grant such other and further relief as the Court may deem just and proper, including an order declaring that Mr. Peterson is entitled immediately to be reinstated as a player in the National Football League because he has already served far more than the maximum two-game suspension that could have been imposed under the CBA."

Peterson, 29, pled no contest last month to a misdemeanor reckless assault charge for injuring his 4-year-old son in May while disciplining the boy with a wooden switch.

Doty has presided over NFL labor matters since the early 1990s, when a federal court jury struck down the league's Plan B free agency system as illegal in the Freeman McNeil trial.

He recused himself last year from the union's long-running collusion suit, reassigning that case to Judge Michael Davis, who heard arguments from both sides in a status conference last month.