Sports Betting Ruling Could Have Consequences, Especially For College Athletes

Updated 7:26 p.m. ET

The Supreme Court threw open the door to legalized sports betting on Monday. By a 6-3 vote, the court struck down a 1992 federal law that effectively prevented most states from legalizing sports betting, clearing up a legal gray area and opening a door for state governments to join in what has become a lucrative industry.

"Congress can regulate sports gambling directly, but if it elects not to do so, each State is free to act on its own," the court wrote.

The law called the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, passed in 1992, prohibited sports betting, except in four states where it had already been legalized — Nevada, Delaware, Montana and Oregon. It gave the other states one year to legalize such betting, if they wanted to do so.

Separately, the Supreme Court also handed down decisions on two other important cases, dealing with personal rights. In Byrd v. US, the court unanimously agreed with the driver of a rental car who said he had his privacy rights violated by police during a traffic stop in Pennsylvania. And in McCoy v. LA, the court ruled, by a 6-3 margin, in favor of a defendant whose lawyer conceded his guilt to the jury disregarding the explicit instructions of his client.

Which states will legalize?

Writing for the court, Justice Samuel Alito said the federal law had unconstitutionally commandeered the states' lawmaking authority. The legislative powers granted to Congress are sizable, but they are not limited, he observed.

The law at issue here, he said, "unequivocally dictates what a state legislature may do and not do," thus putting state legislatures "under the direct control of Congress. It is, he said, as if federal officers were installed in state legislative chambers, armed with the authority to stop legislators from voting on any offending proposals.

Congress, he said, can regulate sports gambling directly, but it can't pass the buck to the states, telling them how to regulate their own citizens.

While the Court's decision was couched in constitutional terms, the results were a lot more mercenary.

Andrew Brandt, director of Sports Law at Villanova University, said the bottom line is that "gambling is a huge, huge fan engagement tool." He quoted Nielsen research, which estimates that the average NFL fan who is a non-bettor watches about 15 to 16 games a year. The average NFL fan who is a bettor watches 45 to 50 games a year. "That kind of information is gold!" said Brandt.

The NFL called on Congress to regulate the industry for legal betting.

"The NFL's long-standing and unwavering commitment to protecting the integrity of our game remains absolute," the league said in a statement. "Congress has long recognized the potential harms posed by sports betting to the integrity of sporting contests and the public confidence in these events. Given that history we intend to call on Congress again, this time to enact a core regulatory framework for legalized sports betting."

Brandt went on to list a number of states that are "on deck" to enact legislation that would legalize sports betting. These states include New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Connecticut, Iowa, Mississippi, New York and West Virginia. Another dozen states have publicly announced plans to do so at different speeds.

One state that is an "absolute no" for sports betting is Utah, which has an anti-gambling provision written into its state's Constitution.

College athletes the most vulnerable

With every player in the sports world seeing dollar signs, there is one problem player — the amateur athlete.

Michelle Minton, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, noted that amateur athletes are the most vulnerable to corruption because they are not paid. And if they are caught throwing a game, "they can lose their entire career," she warned. "Not only their athletic career, but their collegiate career as well."

According to John Wolohan, Professor of Sports Law at Syracuse University, the NCAA "throws a wrench in the works."

Tom Brady or LeBron James are likely not going to throw a game. "We can't pay them enough," Wolohan said.

But, Wolohan hypothesized, take a basketball player at a major Division I school like Syracuse, who is on a full scholarship, but has zero money in the bank. Such a player is much more susceptible when someone approaches him and says, "Hey, you're playing Colgate tonight. You guys are favored by 20 points. Here's $5,000. Make sure it's under 20."

Potential impact of the court's ruling

The ban on legalizing sports betting is also known as the Bradley Act, after its chief promoter, former basketball great Bill Bradley, who served three terms in the U.S. Senate.

"I regret today's decision," Bradley told NPR Monday afternoon. "I think the court ignored the impact of their ruling on sport. I think they've turned every baseball player, basketball player, football player into a roulette chip. There's nothing to prevent betting on high school or even grade-school games with this ruling. The only winner here are casinos, in my opinion.

"And so I think that in one sense it's a sad day. And I think the ruling is a lot like the effect on our democracy of Citizens United, the repeal of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. The result of those two things is politicians spend unlimited amounts of money on politics and states can restrict voting and now states can turn players into roulette chips. To me it's as simple as that."

Or whether a 17-year-old playing basketball could be potentially bought off will and could hit that free throw or not, Bradley said, "I mean, you know, there's no limitation here and you know, the chance of a federal law I think is miniscule. The states where there are casinos, they have large sway. They're going to want to run their game and, as a result, that's what's going to happen here because of the court's ruling."

Bradley said in an earlier interview before oral arguments at the court that there was virtually no congressional opposition to his bill back in 1992, though Bradley added that Donald Trump, with failing investments in Atlantic City casinos at the time, lobbied against it, believing that sports betting was the answer to his financial problems there.

After the bill passed, New Jersey did not seek to legalize gambling in its one-year window of opportunity.

More recently, it tried to get out of the ban, hoping for increased state revenue, but the state repeatedly lost in the lower court.

The Supreme Court's court decision reversing that outcome will make it easier to open the door to sports betting.

But the status quo struck down by the Supreme Court looks almost quaint in light of increased pressure to legalize sports betting across the board.

The American Gaming Association estimates that illegal sports betting has grown to $150-billion-a-year market. And cash-starved states are salivating at the thought of raising billions from legalizing and licensing that activity, not to mention taxing the proceeds.

New Jersey, home to at least a half dozen shuttered Atlantic City casinos, is a state where Republicans and Democrats since 2011 have been trying to overturn the federal ban or somehow get around it.

After oral arguments in December, then-Gov. Chris Christie, R-N.J., said on the Supreme Court steps, "If we're successful here, we can have bets being taken in New Jersey within two weeks of a decision by the court. We're like boy scouts; we're prepared."

What the law did and didn't do

The law does not itself ban sports betting. Instead it prevents states from legalizing sports betting.

Lawyers for New Jersey argued that the law forces state governments to enforce a federal initiative, which the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled is unconstitutional.

Lawyers for the sports leagues said that the federal law is not forcing states to do anything, but rather telling them what not to do, which wouldn't violate the Constitution.

As NPR reported after oral arguments in December, a majority of the justices appeared to have "serious doubts" about the constitutionality of the law.

And on Monday, they put those doubts in writing.

"Our job is to interpret the law Congress has enacted and decide whether it is consistent with the Constitution," the court said in its decision. "PASPA is not."

America has seen a cultural shift on the question of sports gambling. NPR's Uri Berliner reported in 2015 that ESPN has been increasing its coverage of gambling by, for instance, directly referencing the point spread set by oddsmakers.

And while the major U.S. pro- and college-sports leagues have "always sought to distance themselves completely from gambling," as Berliner put it, NBA Commission Adam Silver came out in favor of legalizing (and regulating) sports betting in 2014.

Then there's the popularity of daily fantasy sports — an industry that has weathered legal challenges of its own. Fantasy sports leagues amount to "thinly veiled gambling," as ESPN's Rob King told Berliner, and have helped push sports betting into the mainstream.

It's no wonder that news of today's decision sparked a surge in gaming stocks on Wall Street.

Jason Robins, CEO of DraftKings, estimated an increase of $15 to 20 billion in revenue in the industry if a majority of states end up legalizing sports betting. The ruling today opens up a lot more "cool experiences and products we can offer to our customers," he said.

Meanwhile, the sports betting decision could have implications for a wide range of other state laws — including those legalizing marijuana, Nina noted. Amy Howe, writing for SCOTUSblog, suggests state laws decriminalizing physician-assisted suicide and self-driving cars could also be affected.

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