lol at:

NBA Commissioner David Stern said New Jersey had "no idea what it’s doing and doesn’t care because all it’s interested in is making a buck or two."

And the NBA is trying to do what exactly? Oh that's right make a buck or two. Glass houses, stones, black kettles, all that stuff.

The arrogance of the major sports leagues that this quote represents is amazing:

Way to go, ass. Calling a voter referendum and normal state lawmaking procedure "corruption".

Any poker player who follows or supports the major sports leagues at anywhere near the same levels they did prior to UIGEA needs to have their head examined.

Also this:

I suppose nothing in UIGEA or the actions of Black Friday cost poker players a dime either.

When I was in school, the professor of my sports business class had some knowledge of the inner workings of the NBA and basically called David Stern a criminal and a gangster. And Bud Selig, lol at him passing judgement when most of the greatest players and stat leaders of the past 20 years aren't going to get into the Hall of Fame.

Can you expound on this?

Hopefully if New Jersey loses, they'll tell every law enforcement official in the state not to spend a penny going after sports gambling at all, since they're not required to do anything. Leave enforcement totally up to the feds.

Better yet they could exempt sports betting from NJ gambling law, leaving the Feds with no predicate violation for an IGBA charge, therefore casinos (or anyone else) could offer sports betting, and neither the leagues nor the DOJ could do anything to stop it so long as NJ doesn't regulate or tax it.

He's not someone who seemed to like to roll up his sleeves and wade into a problem. At a settlement conference, for example, he would be very quick to give up. He also doesn't seem to be someone who's looking to make a name for himself or who wants to take bold stands, so he may be reluctant to hold a federal statute of this nature to be unconstitutional.

With Judge Shipp expected to make his ruling Thursday, most ConLaw experts are saying they expect him to find PASPA constitutional - I disagree.

Most keep referring to the rational basis being sufficient to justify regulating the business of sports betting under the Commerce Clause, which would be true if that's what Congress did under PASPA.

A Federal law making the business of sports betting illegal would be a constitutional exercise of the commerce clause, even if it made exceptions for certain States (as Congress made for Indiana in the Johnson Act), so long as they have a rational basis for doing so.

The problem with PASPA is that isn't what Congress did (banning sports betting business); the dirty little secret here is that what both the leagues and the casino industry were trying to prevent was State lotteries and Tribal casinos - recently established by the 1988 passage of IGRA - from venturing into sports betting.

So the law had to be written in a way that prevented governments (Tribal and State) themselves from authorizing sports betting by law, while still allowing for private sports betting where it was previously 'grandfathered'.

That may or may not be 'commandeering', but it's unquestionably beyond the scope of the rational basis doctrine, and likely beyond the scope of the Commerce Clause (States/Tribes passing legislation isn't 'commerce) itself, the result might affect commerce, but the precedent is clear that the Commerce Clause applies to business itself directly.

Regardless, while the Commerce Clause doesn't suffer a uniformity requirement, the regulation of States does suffer a 'general applicability' requirement, meaning they can't prohibit States from doing something they don't also prohibit individuals from doing - and PASPA doesn't prohibit sports betting activity except under the color of State authority (regulated).

The DOJ cites Condon v Reno as precedent for prohibiting the State only activity of selling licensed drivers information, but the DPPA also prohibited private businesses and resellers from trading drivers license information - the DPPA was therefore a general application statute.

PASPA specifically and only prohibits sports gambling pursuant to State law, therefore not generally applicable, not subject to the rational basis threshold, and not justifiable under Congress Commerce Clause authority.

Unlike the ACA (which was ruled an unconstitutional use of the Commerce Clause), the court can't rewrite PASPA to call it a tax, therefore a proper exercise of the Tax and Spend Clause, and if the court tried to call it an exercise of the General Welfare clause, then there is a uniformity requirement - if it's so bad that the ban is Necessary for the General Welfare of Americans in New Jersey, it must be Properly applied to all States.

If the court were to say it isn't a preemption/ban, but an authorization of a (patent like) negative right to the action of injunction, then the precedent under the PRA case is that PASPA would be an abrogation of State/Tribal sovereignty as private businesses/citizens can't sue States in Federal court.

It's not a question of if PASPA will be overturned IMO, the only question is when; even if this newly appointed judge isn't bold enough to strike down a 20 year old law, I'm confident that a higher court will.

Your last paragraph is the most spot on analysis of any. What Shipp does, in the long run, doesn't really matter. I mean, of course it would be better to be responding to an appeal rather than taking one, but the reality is that the Third Circuit is going to decide this, and perhaps the Supreme Court.

This Thursday? That quick? Yep he will rule against NJ.

I don't see the relevance of the courts anymore. They rubber stamp anything Congress does. This law is so ridiculous, that short of repealing the Bill of Rights, I can't see anything Congress could do that would be overturned.

Oh wait, after the Patriot Act, I guess even the Bill of Rights is not safe.

We'll see, it was two weeks ago Thursday that Judge Shipp said we could expect a ruling in two weeks, but as of now it's not on his docket.

Somewhat ironically perhaps, SCOTUS heard oral arguments today on whether race discrimination in some States was still pervasive enough to justify the 'extreme measure' of blocking those States from passing certain legislation under a section of the Voting Rights Act.

That is essentially the same 'extreme measure' taken by Congress to enforce it's prohibition on 'sports gambling pursuant with State law' under PASPA, except rather than protecting a civil right with the Fourteenth Amendment as justification, PASPA is protecting a Congressionally invented right with nothing but a 'rational basis' justification.

SCOTUS seemed to tip their hat indicating at least part of the VRA will be tossed, not that discrimination no longer exists but because their are less extreme measures available for dealing with it, and abrogating State sovereignty requires that their be no other reasonable solution.

Hopefully Judge Shipp was paying attention, I don't believe anyone could have listened to what was being said today in regards to the Voting Rights Act and find justification to abrogate State sovereignty on behalf of the 'integrity of sports'.

BREAKING: NFL et al win 1st round in NJ sports betting battle [northjersey.com]

A federal judge on Thursday granted a permanent injunction to bar New Jersey from offering sports betting as well as a summary judgment, stopping the state’s efforts for now but likely setting up an appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals Third Circuit in Philadelphia.

...

“Although some of the questions raised in this case are novel, judicial intervention is generally unwarranted no matter how unwise a court considers a policy decision of the legislative branch,” Shipp wrote. “As such, to the extent the people of New Jersey disagree with PASPA, their remedy is not through passage of a state law or through the judiciary, but through the repeal or amendment of PASPA in Congress.”

Judge Shipp declared;
Olson argued that PASPA did do more by ordering States not to pass a specific type of law, which may be debatable, but PASPA certainly does do less - which is the real reason that it's unconstitutional - rather than the 'commandeering' argument put forth by Olson.

PASPA doesn't limit the localities in which sports wagering is lawful, it only limits the localities where State regulated and/or taxed sports wagering is unlawful.

If Congress had also made it unlawful for private citizens and businesses to wager on sports, then PASPA would be the general application statute Judge Shipp is incorrectly declaring that it is, but the only thing making it unlawful for private citizens to conduct sports wagering is current NJ state bookmaking laws.

I don't actually blame Judge Shipp, NJ argued the wrong discrimination, the problem with PASPA isn't the unequal treatment of States, the problem with PASPA is that it treats States as a lower class of citizen than private individuals, businesses, and even organized crime within it's own borders.

NJ could act tomorrow to repeal its own bookmaking laws, casinos could then begin taking sports wagers and there wouldn't be anything the DOJ could do to stop them, as they wouldn't violate a required predicate State law for an Illegal Gambling Business Act violation.

Therefore PASPA is not a general application statute, and unlike the Voting Rights Act, Congress has no Fourteenth Amendment justification available for the strict (rather than rational basis) standard of scrutiny required to place some States on a lesser footing than other States or private individuals.

Perhaps Olson was saving some ammunition for appeal, having forced the DOJ and the leagues to empty their barrels defending his commandeering argument, he forced the DOJ to cite Reno v. Condon as precedent for a statute not 'commandeering' so long as it didn't force the State to take any action, but SCOTUS proffered in dicta that the DPPA would have itself been ruled unconstitutional if it only applied to State commerce of drivers license information.

The DPPA however also restricted private individuals as resellers from the commerce of drivers license information, making it a general application statute, Reno didn't prevail because the court held a 'rational basis' sufficient to place States on a lower footing than private individuals, the DPPA was upheld precisely because it treated States and private businesses equally - a test Judge Shipp failed to administer, but which PASPA blatantly fails.

I wrote this quote based on the cliff notes posted on John Brennan's blog, having now read full 45 page opinion, it's clear that Judge Shipp didn't choose to ignore the lack of general applicability of PASPA and punt the case to the Third Circuit, he actually developed a novel construction of the statute to give Congress the benefit of the doubt.

He declares that PASPA can be read not as a stand alone preemption of State authorized sports betting, but as a plug of a loophole in the 'framework of anti-sports betting Federal law', he cites the Wire Act and other Title 18 statutes as the prohibition of private sports betting, rendering PASPA a constitutional cog in the Federal prohibition.

On one hand, it's a relief to know he didn't just ignore the constitutional issue of regulating State activity without regulating it's private equivalent, on the other hand, his construction is a house of cards that falls apart the instant a State removes it's own prohibition of private sports betting.

Throughout Title 18, with the possible exception of the Wire Act which assumes Federal jurisdiction, Congress defers to the States to determine what is or isn't unlawful gambling, so to reason that a Statute which preempts that deference is a 'closing a loophole' in that same framework is irrational.

What he is establishing is that the Federal government can have it's cake and eat it too, deferring to the States to regulate the private commercial activity on one hand, while themselves only regulating the State's involvement in the activity.

I'm struggling to come up with an analogy as the precedent his construction would set is so absurd, but it would be like telling States to enforce their speed limits on their citizens, while Federal agents enforce those same limits on the State police chasing the violators.

If the States are going to be given deference over the policing of gambling, they also must retain the liberty to decide how best to do it, if NJ believes the best way to curtail unlawful sports betting is to make regulated sports betting available, the government can either disagree and preempt the entire field, or do nothing - they can't (constitutionally) have it both ways.

Or in other words,

Not sure if I would be willing to double down for the appeal, but I was completely confident in Round 1 being rigged for the satanic overlords.

Congrats, you certainly nailed it, interpretative gymnastics is exactly what Judge Shipp deserves the gold medal for in this ruling.

The thing I'm most embarrassed about is that it's not that I didn't anticipate a gymnastic effort, I explored every possible loophole I thought he might consider, but the idea of combining PASPA with Title 18 and declaring that combination 'substantively equivalent to the Clean Air Act constitutionally' was a level of thinking usually only seen two steps above his pay grade.

Any ideas when round 2 kicks off? How long should it take? Months? Years?

Today

http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf..._river_default

Interesting twist:


http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/201..._river_default

I can't remember the last time I watched a sporting event without having money on it
like whats the point? they need to stop being dicks about it

Glad NJ is trying to show the hypocrisy of allowing fantasy sports but not sports gambling.

A federal law that removes the rights of citizens in some states, while not doing so in other states, is a clear violation of equal protection under the law IMO.

Just from reading TAMiller's posts, assuming he is correct, the federal law does not do that. From what I glean from his posts, the federal law prohibits states from regulating sports betting, but doesn't prohibit people from engaging in it. Most states then have laws which prohibit people from engaging in it.

FYI - California's bill that would legalize sports wagers (and allow California to potentially weigh in on the New Jersey lawsuit) is set for hearing April 23, 2013. http://sgov.senate.ca.gov/agenda

Also, keep your eye on this website -- the online poker bills (SB 51 and SB 678) can be added to the agenda with only four days notice.

It appears this is set to continue on June 26.

http://blog.northjersey.com/meadowla...-betting-case/

There is more to the NJ Fantasy Sports effort than "showing hypocrisy". Delaware makes good money off their limited "sports action".