By: Josh Galante
On May 14, 2018, the United States Supreme Court issued an opinion with nationwide ramifications that could create a potentially massive new industry. In Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association, the Court found that the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), a 1992 federal law that purports to make it unlawful for states “to sponsor, operate, advertise, promote, license, or authorize . . . a lottery, sweepstakes, or other betting, gambling, or wagering scheme based . . . on” competitive sporting events, violates the “anticommandeering” rule created by the US Constitution’s Tenth Amendment. PASPA contained “grandfather” provisions that allowed certain historical sports betting programs in a limited number of states, including Nevada, which had been in place before PASPA, to continue. The Court held that, because PASPA dictates what state legislatures may and may not do, rather than make sports betting itself a federal crime by regulating private actors, the law impermissibly infringed on state’s rights under the Constitution’s dual sovereignty system. (more…)
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