The question isn’t whether or not the Supreme Court will rule in New Jersey’s favor on Monday; it’s how resounding the victory will be.
That was the sentiment at a briefing Friday afternoon that previewed December 4th’s Supreme Court hearing, where oral arguments in Christie v. NCAA, the high-profile sports betting case, will be presented to the high court.
“I believe New Jersey will end up with sports betting at Monmouth Park racetrack and any other participating casinos that want to have it by Week 1 of the NFL season of 2018,” predicted Dan Wallach, a sports law attorney with Becker & Poliakoff in south Florida, during the event at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
“We could be looking at sports betting in New Jersey by the Final Four” if the court moves quickly in its deliberations, he continued.
The case will examine whether or not the U.S. government overreached its constitutional authority in preventing New Jersey’s backdoor attempt to allow sports betting within its borders by removing its state prohibitions on the activity.
More broadly, the case has important implications about federalism, particularly the extent that the federal government is allowed to regulate behavior at the state level.
Under this umbrella, the court is expected to weigh in on the constitutionality of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, which largely prohibits sports betting outside of Nevada, and whether or not New Jersey will be permitted to offer it as well.
Presenters offered a multiplicity of reasons, including previous court trends, the strength of New Jersey’s arguments, shifting public perceptions and the broader importance of the case, as to why the pro-sports betting would prevail.
“We’re going to have legalized sports betting in some form,” argued Michael Pollock of Spectrum Gaming. “The mindset of the public has shifted so much, irrespective of what the Supreme Court decides we’re going to have sports betting of some kind.”
“The question I wrestle with is how sweeping the victory will be for New Jersey,” said Wallach. “Is it one that will largely only benefit New Jersey or will it be floodgates wide open?”
Matthew McGill, an attorney with Gibson Dunn, argued that PASPA constitutes a clear violation of the anti-commandeering principle which restricts the federal government’s ability to regulate state-level behavior.
“Rather than the federal government directly regulating sports wagering, PASPA requires states to prohibit sports wagering for the federal government,” he said, emphasizing that the law’s requirement that states cannot repeal their sports betting prohibitions is little more than clever wording.
“A command to prohibit sports wagering can be restated as a prohibition against repealing state law prohibitions,” he said.
McGill added that the leagues’ inconsistent position toward PASPA in recent years creates, in effect, a leaky interpretation that does not reflect Congress’s intentions when it first passed the law in 1992.
“What the leagues said from 1992 until 2012 was that PASPA was a broad ban on sports wagering,” he explained. “Starting in 2012, the leagues argued, ‘Well what PASPA actually does is it requires you to prohibit sports betting or it allows you the option of repealing all of your prohibitions on sports betting.”
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Read more of Aaron Stanley’s work at https://www.clippings.me/aaronstanley
