A federal appeals court on Tuesday said New Jersey could not enforce a 2014 law permitting wagering on sports, a decision that could end a years-long effort to allow such betting in the state. The leagues claimed the expansion of legal sports betting to New Jersey would damage the integrity of their games and lead to more game-fixing.
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Currently, only Nevada offers legal sports betting on individual games. It’s estimated up to hundreds of billions of dollars are bet illegally on sports annually in the U.S.
The NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB and NCAA sued the state, however, and it was determined that legalized sports betting would have violated a federal law.
New Jersey has made two attempts at legalizing sports gambling in an attempt to shore up the lagging fortunes of the state’s Atlantic City casinos, which have been decimated by the spread of legalized casino gambling in neighboring states.
Though each court ruling has gone against the state, there have been dissents in two previous three-judge rulings at the 3rd Circuit.
“Second, I’m going to test the public’s, legislature’s and the governor’s temperature on repealing all our laws on sports betting and using the extensive police powers of the state to restrict the locations where sports betting can take place, for instance, like we do with gentlemen’s clubs”.
The uniqueness of the judicial votes induced the Third Circuit in October to vacate the latter ruling pending an appearance by attorneys for each side before a dozen of the Circuit’s judges in an “en banc” hearing. U.S. District Court Judge Michael Shipp, a Paterson native, ruled in favor of the leagues in February 2013, writing that the state should seek a repeal by getting Congress to change its sports betting ban.
The panel upheld a ruling from the same court that declared the state’s amended law in 2014 was a “de facto authorization” of sports betting at those sites even though that law stated that the state would not be involved in regulating the gambling.
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Sports betting supporters have called the leagues’ stance hypocritical, saying the leagues condone and profit from sports fantasy leagues in which participants assemble rosters of players from different teams and compete against others.
