One has to admire the Winston Churchill-esque determination exhibited by State Senator Ray Lesniak, Governor Chris Christie, and others looking to bring legal sports betting to New Jersey’s casinos and racetracks. Although they were just handed yet another defeat by a federal court, the saga of New Jersey’s half-decade long push to carve out its own customized loophole in the federal ban on sports wagering lives on.
On Tuesday, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia rejected New Jersey’s argument that because of the repeal of existing state prohibitions on sports betting, casinos and racetracks inside the state could accept wagers without fear of criminal liability. The court, in a 2-1 decision, said the state’s actions to partially repeal its prohibitions on sports betting were actually granting explicit permission to engage in behavior prohibited under the federal 1992 Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act.
The appeals court reaffirmed what opponents – most notably the major sports leagues and the NCAA – had argued and previous court rulings had concluded: that at the end of the day, New Jersey’s argument is little more than imaginative legal maneuvering and gimmickry, intended to help parts of the state economy. “We acknowledge NJ’s salutary purpose in attempting to legalize sports gambling to revive its troubled casino and racetrack industries,” the ruling stated, before concluding that “(S)tates may not use clever drafting or mandatory construction provisions to escape the supremacy of federal law.”
But the story lives on. As expected, Senator Lesniak announced immediately after the decision that he will push for the case to be heard en banc, a fancy way of saying that the entire bench of judges of the Third Circuit would hear the case instead of just the normal panel of three judges.
If the case does end up being heard en banc, which is no slam dunk (the court itself will decide), should we expect the end result to be any different? Surely not. But the crucial point is that this seemingly never-ending case is creating all sorts of favorable, free publicity for proponents of sports betting.
Free publicity may not sound like much compensation for Lesniak and the folks at Monmouth Park Racetrack who believe that sports betting will be an elixir for their financial troubles. But just as football is a game of inches, so too is this fight.
There are plenty of Americans who, in their heart of hearts, find the prohibition on sports betting to be nonsensical. They may be millennials who have embraced libertarian values and eschew traditional anti-gambling stances, or states rights conservatives who don’t understand why the federal government should be telling casinos in New Jersey what types of wagers they can and cannot offer, or those who now bet on sports, legally or otherwise, or want to, and see no reason why such betting shouldn’t be far more convenient.
The more the sports betting question makes rounds through the media, regardless of how many times Lesniak and New Jersey may lose, the more momentum builds for a wholesale reworking of the country’s sports wagering framework.
Just look at how far the debate has progressed since last September, when Chris Christie issued his directive authorizing New Jersey casinos to begin offering sports wagers, a move that was opposed immediately by the sports leagues and became one of the key points of contention for Tuesday’s ruling. Two months later, in November, NBA commissioner Adam Silver penned his New York Times op-ed calling for a federal sports betting framework. The American Gaming Association then waded into the conversation, releasing estimates of the amounts illegally wagered each year on events such as the Super Bowl and March Madness. The AGA has also called for a refreshed dialogue in Washington on the issue, prompting leaders in Congress, such as Senator John McCain, to call for hearings on the matter.
Unfortunately for New Jersey, all of this may not actually benefit that state at all, in the long run. If a rework or outright repeal of the federal sports betting prohibition were to be signed into U.S. law, casinos and bookies in every state would presumably be allowed to offer wagers on sporting events. That would take us full circle to the original reason why New Jersey’s gambling industry has fallen on hard times: Why should punters travel to New Jersey if they can easily place bets in their home states of New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware?
