Articles

New paper highlights importance of New Jersey sports gambling case

October 18, 2017 | By JONATHAN WOOD

The Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Michelle Minton has a new paper highlighting the importance of the Supreme Court ruling the right way in New Jersey’s challenge to the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act. As Michelle explains, and PLF, CEI, Cato, and WILL explained in our amicus brief in the case, PASPA has been a failu ...

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New Jersey goes all in on the Constitution in sports betting case

August 31, 2017 | By JONATHAN WOOD

Can Congress dictate to states what their own laws must be? Anyone familiar with federalism will likely immediately say “no.” Our Founders drafted a Constitution that preserved the independence of the the states, believing that dividing power between the federal government and the states would be a bulwark to protect our liberty. To pre ...

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Supreme Court to hear constitutional challenge to federal sports betting ban

June 27, 2017 | By JONATHAN WOOD

This morning, the Supreme Court decided to review New Jersey’s constitutional challenge to a federal law that purports to forbid almost every state—except, notably, Nevada—from legalizing sports gambling. PLF, joined by Cato and CEI, filed an amicus brief supporting cert. The Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, which i ...

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New Jersey places a bet on the Constitution

November 15, 2016 | By JONATHAN WOOD

States are not puppets of the federal government, to be manipulated to accomplish whatever policy the federal government might prefer. If they were, both individual liberty and political accountability would be compromised. That’s why our Constitution forbids the feds from requiring states to govern according to federal instructions. That ven ...

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New Jersey doubles down on sports betting

March 10, 2016 | By JONATHAN WOOD

This week, I participated in a Federalist Society teleconference call on the Third Circuit’s recent en banc arguments over New Jersey’s efforts to repeal its prohibitions against sports gambling. That call has since been released as a podcast and is available here. … ...

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What are the odds that SCOTUS will have to decide the constitutionality of Nevada’s monopoly on sports gambling?

November 03, 2014 | By JONATHAN WOOD

Last term, the Supreme Court considered a petition to hear New Jersey’s challenge to a federal law that forbids any state from liberalizing its sports gambling laws except Nevada. PLF and Cato submitted an amicus brief asking the Court to take up the case to decide an important constitutional question: can Congress arbitrarily discriminate am ...

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Can Congress grant a state a monopoly over an industry at the expense of the rest of the nation?

March 17, 2014 | By JONATHAN WOOD

Today, PLF and the Cato Institute filed this brief supporting New Jersey’s cert. petition in its challenge to the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA)’s grant to Nevada of a monopoly on sports-gambling. This federal statute was adopted in 1992 and forbids any state that didn’t already have legalized sports-gamb ...