\nThursday will see New Jersey state Sen. Ray Lesniak introduce his latest piece of legislation intended to bring legal sports betting to the Garden State. Lesniak has stated his bill will explicitly repeal state-level prohibitions against sports betting at Atlantic City casinos and state racetracks, giving the state a better chance of getting US District Judge Michael Shipp to agree that the state\u2019s plan doesn\u2019t conflict with the 1992 PASPA federal sports betting prohibition.<\/p>\n
\tGaming attorney Daniel Wallach has expressed doubts as to the wisdom of Gov. Chris Christie\u2019s plan to convince Shipp that the original 2012 sports betting legislation implicitly repealed the betting ban at tracks and casinos. Wallach believes the 2012 legislation did nothing of the kind, leaving Shipp little choice but to reject the state\u2019s latest attempt to circumvent PASPA. (Read Wallach\u2019s detailed argument here.)<\/p>\n
\tWallach also questions Christie\u2019s argument that federal courts had invalidated only portions of the original legislation, allowing the state to proceed with the allegedly implied repeal portions intact. Finally, Wallach argues that the state\u2019s selective non-enforcement of its own sports betting laws amounts to an \u201cindirect\u201d authorization of sports betting, which would fall afoul of PASPA\u2019s edicts against states authorizing or regulating sports betting within their borders.<\/p>\n
\tOn Tuesday, Lesniak told NorthJersey.com\u2019s John Brennan that he mostly agreed with Wallach\u2019s analysis, except for the parts referencing Lesniak\u2019s new bill. Lesniak argued that \u201cstates\u2019 rights include police powers to determine where business activity can take place.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tHOW WILL THE LEAGUES REACT?
\n\tThe pro sports leagues that led the charge to defeat New Jersey\u2019s previous sports betting ambitions have been silent on how they intend to counter the state\u2019s plans. League spokesmen have uniformly uttered \u2018no comment\u2019 on whether they will seek to intervene ahead of Shipp\u2019s Oct. 6 date to consider New Jersey\u2019s latest legal gambit or if they\u2019ll wait until Shipp rules to stick a fresh legal thorn in New Jersey\u2019s side.<\/p>\n
\tOn Wednesday, NJ.com reported that state Sen. Jim Whelan and Assemblyman Vincent Mazzeo had made an offer to coax the leagues on board. The two pols wrote to National Basketball Association commissioner Adam Silver saying they \u201cappreciated\u201d his recent public comments that the spread of legal sports betting across the US was \u201cinevitable\u201d and that the NBA would ultimately participate in the activity.<\/p>\n
\tThe two pols have offered to slap a 0.25% fee on every sports wager placed in New Jersey, with the resulting kitty given to the leagues to help fund sports integrity enforcement programs. The pols believe this could become \u201ca national model for sports betting\u201d that would generate \u201cmillions of dollars a year for the leagues.\u201d Neither Silver nor his counterparts at the other leagues have commented on the offer.<\/p>\n
\tLast week, Lesniak said he believed the leagues would ultimately recognize that their legal defeat on the sports betting issue was equally inevitable and that they would \u201coffer a deal\u201d before that day happened. Lesniak believes the leagues \u201cwould be willing to stand down for a piece of the action\u201d but suggested some hard bargaining lay ahead.<\/p>\n
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Thursday will see New Jersey state Sen. Ray Lesniak introduce his latest piece of legislation intended to bring legal sports betting to the Garden State. Lesniak has stated his bill will explicitly repeal state-level prohibitions against sports betting at Atlantic…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-casino-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8037\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}