The Implications of the United States Supreme Court’s Murphy v. NCAA Decision on Legalized Sports Betting -
On May 14, 2018, the United States Supreme Court paved the way for the expansion of legalized sports gambling with its decision in Murphy v. Nat’l Collegiate Athletic Ass’n, 138 S. Ct. 1461 (2018). In Murphy, the Court held that the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (“PASPA”)—the federal law that for over twenty-five years prohibited states from passing any new laws authorizing gambling on professional or amateur sporting events—was an unconstitutional violation of states’ rights. With the prohibitions of PASPA no longer in place, the expansion of legalized sports betting is already underway: Within weeks of the decision, the first legal sports bets in the United States (outside of Nevada) were taken in Delaware and New Jersey. Other states will follow. This article examines the potential legal implications of the Murphy decision on sports betting in the United States.
Background on the Murphy Decision -
Congress enacted PASPA in 1992 to prevent the spread of legal sports gambling beyond any state that already allowed it at that time. Instead of preventing individuals from betting on sporting events, Congress prohibited the states from legalizing sports gambling by declaring it unlawful for any “governmental entity to sponsor, operate, advertise, promote, license, or authorize by law or compact . . . a lottery, sweepstakes, or other betting, gambling, or wagering scheme based . . . on” competitive sporting events. 28 U.S.C. § 3702. At the time, Nevada was the only state that allowed widespread betting on individual sporting events. Delaware, Oregon, and Montana allowed very limited forms of sports betting such as sports pools or NFL parlay betting.
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