Oct. 21 (Bloomberg) — The National Football League and three other professional sports leagues sued to block a New Jersey racetrack from accepting bets this weekend on NFL games, as a new law would allow.

Governor Chris Christie signed a law Oct. 17 that would let racetracks and struggling casinos in Atlantic City offer sports betting. Monmouth Park Racetrack said that day it would take such bets as soon as Oct. 26. In the lawsuit, filed yesterday in Trenton federal court, the leagues ask a judge to block the law.

The NFL, Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League and the National Collegiate Athletic Association “will suffer significant and irreparable harm” if the state’s casinos and racetracks take sports bets before the judge can determine whether doing so is lawful, according to a court filing today.

U.S. District Judge Michael Shipp held a telephone conference today and ordered lawyers for Christie and other state defendants to file a written response to the suit by tomorrow. The leagues must respond by the next day.

The renewed push for sports betting comes as Atlantic City’s gambling revenue sags with casinos in Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and New York cutting into the New Jersey resort’s haul.

Christie signed the law despite earlier failed attempts to circumvent the U.S. Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, or PASPA, which took effect in 1993 and bans sports betting in all but four states: Nevada, Delaware, Montana and Oregon. He called himself a “strong proponent of legalized sports wagering in the state of New Jersey.”
Amendment
In 2011, voters approved a non-binding amendment to the state constitution to allow sports betting. In January 2012, Christie, a Republican, signed legislation authorizing sports bets, and the same leagues sued, obtaining an injunction from Shipp that a federal appeals court later upheld.

On Sept. 9, Christie’s administration declared that casinos and racetracks can offer sports betting without fear of state prosecution or civil liability. Acting Attorney General John Hoffman said sports wagering was legal as long as it didn’t involve New Jersey’s college teams or any collegiate events in the state.

Christie’s lawyers filed court papers saying the U.S. law was intended to restrict the spread of “state-sponsored” sports wagering that might create a “label of legitimacy.” To declare that casinos and tracks may operate a sports pool doesn’t grant it legitimacy, they said.
Wagering Laws
In its complaint, the NFL claimed that the 2014 Sports Wagering Law, in repealing the 2012 statute, “purports to repeal any rules and regulations at casinos and racetracks that are specific to sports gambling.”

What it doesn’t repeal “is the requirement to obtain a license from the state to operate a casino or racetrack, or the scores of rules and regulations with which casinos and racetracks must comply in order to maintain such a license,” the NFL said.

In the filing today, the leagues said, “New Jersey’s effort to thread the needle therefore cannot succeed: the 2014 Sports Wagering Law necessarily violates either PASPA or the New Jersey Constitution.”

Christie spokesman Kevin Roberts declined to comment on the lawsuit.

The case is National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Christie, 14-cv-06450, U.S. District Court, District of New Jersey (Trenton).

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