Supreme Court agrees to hear NJ sports betting case

The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to hear a case challenging whether New Jersey can repeal its own state bans on sports betting.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and other major U.S. sports leagues are fighting a 2014 state law that partially repeals prohibitions against sports wagering at New Jersey racetracks and casinos. 

The sports leagues claim the state law authorizes and licenses sports gambling violates the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA). 

{mosads}The federal law, which Congress passed in 1992, prohibits states from sponsoring, operating, advertising, promoting, licensing or authorizing sports gambling in all but a handful of states. 

The 3rd Circuit sided with the NCAA and other sports leagues. The court said the PASPA, by its terms, prohibits states from authorizing by law sports gambling, and because the 2014 law does exactly that, it violates federal law.  

The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case even though the U.S. acting solicitor general said the court’s review was unwarranted. 

The solicitor general said even if the court agreed with the sports group’s claim that PASPA’s ban on state authorized sports betting violates the 10th Amendment, the sports-gambling schemes purportedly authorized by the 2014 law would still ban private parties from sponsoring, operating, advertising, or promoting such schemes.