U.S. Supreme Court Rejects NJ's Effort To Host Sports Gambling
By Kim Glovas
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (CBS) -- The US Supreme Court is leaving in place a ban on sports betting in New Jersey.
The Garden State had tried to allow betting on professional and college sports in Atlantic City casinos and state racetracks (see related story).
The law in question is the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992. It allows sports betting in only four states: Nevada, Delaware, Montana, and Oregon.
Chris Soriano, a gambling industry lawyer with Duane Morris LLP, in Cherry Hill, says it's no surprise the high court did not consider the challenge by New Jersey.
But he says there are two scenarios where it could be revisited.
"One is another state in another circuit decides that it wants to do what New Jersey did and legalize sports betting, and that the circuit in which that state sits decides the case differently than the decision made by the 3rd Circuit -- takes a different interpretation of the federal statute," Soriano says. "If that were to happen you would have a split, where you would have two Circuit Court of Appeals interpreting the statute differently."
Soriano says that would get the US Supreme Court's attention.
The other scenario is that, with casino gambling expanding rapidly, we may see a push by states to ask their Congress members to change the federal law that limits sports betting to only the four states in which it is grandfathered.
