New Jersey Sports Betting Case Could Be Thrown Out

While much of the talk in the sports world these days revolves around whether or not the U.S. Supreme Court will rule in favor of keeping the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Law or killing it, there is a third outcome.

It is technically possible that, rather than actually issue a ruling on the New Jersey sports betting case, the highest court in the land could simply throw it out altogether.

This third position in the landmark case – undoubtedly the biggest of its kind in the history of the country - is possible due to a constitutionally backed legal principal referred to as “mootness.” At the most basic level, mootness refers to situations in which an as yet undecided case is simply not decided because of some outside event that nullifies the original cause or controversy of the case or makes it a non-issue. In the case New Jersey’s crusade against the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (PASPA), which prohibits any state except Nevada, Delaware, Oregon or Montana from legalizing and regulating wagering on sporting events, the SCOTUS justices could very easily kick Murphy v. NCAA to the curb via mootness.

New Jersey Sports Betting Case Could Be Thrown Out

How so? Well, at least in part it’s because Major League Baseball’s (MLB) lawyer, Bryan Seely, opened his big mouth in a Missouri House Budget Committee hearing a little over a week ago. To be fair, Seely was not exactly breaking new ground when he candidly remarked to the members of the committee that a vastly expanded legal sports betting market in the US – the kind that New Jersey’s Atlantic City casinos and hundreds of their counterparts in other states are dreaming of – would be good business for the MLB. His exact words were “There is the opportunity for Major League Baseball to profit on this,” and Seely is far from wrong, as the annual yearly sports betting handle generated by American bettors totals out somewhere between $150 billion and $250 billion.

Though the overwhelming majority of that massive cash flow is going to overseas operators that legally do business outside the parameters of US federal or state law, there is no room for doubt that close to half of all regular viewers of sports in this country frequently bet on sports. Probably one in 10 regular viewers of professional sporting events only watch sports so they can bet on those sports, at least that is what a recent Nielsen Poll survey indicates. Whatever the case might be in actual fact, sports betting seems like an obvious fit with the professional sports leagues, though for years they all officially opposed its expansion from outside the Las Vegas Strip and went as far as jointly (and officially) alleging that sports betting would cause “irreparable injury” to the leagues.

Indeed, it was under those pretenses that the MLB, along with the National Basketball Association (NBA), National Football League (NFL), National Hockey League (NHL) and National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) – the principal non-government backers of PASPA, in fact – went after New Jersey in 2014. At that time, the leagues filed their PASPA lawsuit four years ago on the grounds that more sports betting hurts the sports because of the increased possibility for fixing schemes, cheating and so on. Now, it seems, the leagues are comfortable enough that their official in-house legal counsel can openly espouse a contrary opinion while testifying in a state legislative committee hearing with the potential to impact sports betting legalization.

In effect, what the leagues have done in various media outlets and now in the legislative setting is to totally reverse their stance on the very issue on which they brought the case against the Garden State in the first place. Additionally, the MLB and NBA (and now the US PGA Tour) have combined their lobbying energies – and six figure outlays per month – to lobby in nearly a dozen states in favor of sports betting legislation at the state level that would only take effect if New Jersey loses on the question of PASPA’s constitutionality. The U.S. Supreme Court does not have to run with this, but if the nine justices on the panel decided to throw the case out on this basis, they would be within their rights to do so, as it looks an awful lot like the whole case is, by its very definition, moot.

However, it is worth pointing out that neither current New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy nor any of the pro sports leagues and the NCAA – the parties that make up the defendants in the case to get PASPA stricken from the rolls – have filed the necessary motion with the SCOTUS to make any claim of mootness. Referred to as a Rule 21, motions of that time are required before either the plaintiff or the defendant in a case can call on the adjudicating body to examine whether or not a given case has been rendered moot or not. Still, nobody involved in the matter has given any indication that they want to go forward with any such motion in the first place, but there is no need to either, as the Supreme Court could broach the subject on its own, even if the aggrieved parties “fail to raise the issue.”

So just what would happen if the U.S. Supreme Court decided to throw out Murphy v. NCAA or otherwise not make a definitive decision about the constitutionality of PASPA’s ban on allowing 46 states from regulating sports wagering? For one thing, it would not likely result in any state except the Garden State being allowed to offer sports betting options legally for visitors and customers at its casinos and other authorized outlets. If that happens, then all the work done by the dozen or so states looking to legalize sports betting inside their borders would have been for naught, as they will not have gotten the go-ahead from the top, so to speak, that the federal law preventing them from doing so is no longer in effect.

On the other hand, a declaration of mootness by the SCOTUS justices would probably offer the biggest win of all for the legal offshore sportsbooks, as they will keep right on offering their legal sports betting platform to American bettors. The sports leagues, for their part, wouldn’t really lose too much by their case against New Jersey being thrown out for mootness, and, given that a Rule 21 can be filed at any time prior to a ruling, they made decide to force the issue. If it starts to look like New Jersey is going to actually win the case and open up the possibility that they won’t get a huge skim off the top of the handle if “integrity fees” are not included in the state sports wagering laws, look for the leagues to invoke mootness to get out of it.

MORE NEWS

BEST LEGAL ONLINE SPORTSBOOKS + SPORTS BETTING SITES
  • BEST LEGAL SPORTSBOOKS
  • USA?
  • SPORTSBOOK BONUS OFFERS
  • MOBILE?
  • GET STARTED