Governor Chris Christe and the State of New Jersey are going to have to put their efforts to legalize wagering on sports in New Jersey on the back burner, at least for the time being.
Two of the three judges on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals shot down New Jersey’s bid to start taking wagers at the states Casinos and Racetracks when the court upheld a ruling from back in May from US District Judge Michael Shipp which prevented New Jersey from offering sports wagering within the state.
But the decision was much closer than expected and Gov. Christe and Co. are seeing a silver lining behind the dark cloud. Legal experts have noted a ‘soft language’ that seems to leave plenty of room for additional debate and perhaps an appointment with the US Supreme Court.
New Jersey is going to continue the fight. There is just too much potential money involved in the form of tax revenues to not do so.
Although the court denied New Jersey’s case, the language in the 128 page decision made several references to ‘the strong arguments’ from the state. As a matter of fact, it looks like the members of the court did not buy into the reasoning behind the PASPA or Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, a 20 year old federal statute which prohibits sports betting in all but four states.
It is the PASPA’s exception of those four states Delaware, Oregon, Montana and, of course, Nevada, that lies at the heart of the debate and leaves the entire issue open to criticism and modification.
A law professor named Tassos Kabyrjus, who has written extensively on PASPA, told reporters in a recent interview concerning the decision, “They don’t have very strong language in key parts of the decision. There is language in there that leads one to believe they were not thoroughly convinced. The more you dig and the deeper you go into it and read between the lines, this is closer than one would think.”
And then there is this, from the court’s decision itself, “If baseball is a game of inches, constitutional adjudication may be described as a matter of degrees. The questions we have addressed are in many ways sui generis, which is lawyer talk for ‘unique in its characteristics’. Neither the standing nor the merits issues we have tackled permit an easy solution by resorting to a controlling case that provides a definitive “Eureka!” moment.”
