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U.S. states will be able to legalize sports gambling following a Supreme Court ruling. New Jersey will be among the first to do so:
The U.S. Supreme Court freed states to legalize gambling on individual sporting events, unleashing what will be a race to attract billions of dollars in wagers and heralding a new era for the nation's sports leagues.
The justices on Monday struck down [PDF] the federal law that had barred single-game gambling in most of the country, saying it unconstitutionally forced states to maintain their prohibitions. Nevada has been the only state with legal single-game wagering.
Sports gambling could begin in a matter of weeks in casinos and racetracks in New Jersey, which instigated the legal fight by repealing its gambling ban. Mississippi, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware and West Virginia could follow soon, and the number of states might reach double digits by the end of the year.
Also at SCOTUSblog, Reuters, and USA Today.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 15 2018, @06:32PM
You're pretty close.
I read the judgement, and the key point at issue is whether PASPA constitutes commandeering; i.e. the feds telling the states what and how to regulate, on a topic that properly resides with the states.
The basic defence from the federal side was: "We didn't tell them what laws to pass! We told them what laws NOT to pass! And how we'd punish their citizens if they followed state law!"
The response from SCOTUS on a 6/2 with one split decision was: "Fuck that noise. Telling the states what laws they can't pass, on a state jurisdictional issue, is just as bad as telling them what they must pass. This law is invalid, and we also don't think that Congress would have meant to pass it all piecemeal, so we're not doing the seperability thing to save chunks of this law."
To me the most interesting thing was that the judgements from the pro-federal-interference side came from left-wing justices. ... go liberty? I guess?