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US Supreme Court strikes down federal law prohibiting sports gambling
- neuland 8y agoThe article is a bit light on details, but it sounds like this doesn't automatically legalize sports betting. Rather, it allows states to legalize it, which at least 20 states intend to do.
- golemotron 8y agoEverything is legal unless there's a law against it. States would not legalize gambling, they would repeal laws against it.
- mythrwy 8y agoI'm guessing they will regulate it though. And of course demand their share of the revenue.
- fapjacks 8y agoI don't know why you're being downvoted. Your statement is factually correct.
- yammajr 8y agoIANAL, but I'm not sure that's exactly true. As far as I know, in 49 states (not Louisiana), if there's not a law about it we fall back on some system based on english common law.
- jessaustin 8y agoThe English allow sports betting, don't they?
- tathougies 8y agoCalifornia falls back on Spanish civil law. The most obvious example of this is the fact spouses cannot hold property individually in California, except for a few (constitutionally protected) items. In general, each sovereign jurisdiction will fall back on the legal system that was in place at the time the jurisdiction gained its sovereignty. For California, the ancestor state was Mexico, and thus Spain. https://www.law.berkeley.edu/library/robbins/pdf/ca-legalheritage.pdf https://www.law.berkeley.edu/library/robbins/pdf/ca-legalher... But to answer the larger question. Everything that is not specifically legislated against is legal. Some ancient laws may still hold, but most are probably going to be found unconstitutional. Although, there may be some exceptions that you could convince a court to enforce.
- fapjacks 8y agoWell, state law could fall back on martian (with an "n") law. It doesn't matter. Laws exist to state the thing you cannot do. If there is no law against the thing, the thing's not illegal. Falling back on another system doesn't make it any less true that unless there's a law against a thing, you are free to do that thing. And I'd add that laws stating a thing must be done a certain way are simply excluding all other ways of doing a thing. And even if English Common Law fell back on some unspoken Viking Code, the entire body of law exists to state what is forbidden.
- golemotron 8y ago> I don't know why you're being downvoted. Your statement is factually correct. I'm used to it. HN readers are very sensitive to tone. The downvotes come first and then the upvotes.
- italophil 8y agoI am curious what that means for fantasy sports companies like DraftKings that ran into issues with gambling laws in the past.
- bhouston 8y agoIt will legalize DraftKings I believe on a state-by-state basis. This was a law I understand pushed by Nevada casino/bookmakers who wanted a monopoly on this to protect their profits.
- everdev 8y agoThere was already a federal exemption because of the way daily fantasy was constructed (it was considered a game of skill not tied to the win/loss of a sports team, since you had to pick individuals from different teams). However, several states made it illegal.
- Gargoyle 8y agoYeah, with DFS (daily fantasy sports) you're even limited to x number of players from a given game, so that you're not effectively betting on the outcome of that game by selecting an entire team. I never really understood how they got around the limitation with stuff like NASCAR, where you really are essentially betting on the outcome of a single race. Maybe it's like PGA where the tournament is the culmination of a set of matches or something.
- giarc 8y agoIt's big for them. When you signed up for, and logged into DraftKings (or FanDuel) you would have to list your state/it would detect your state. I was never in a state that barred sports gambling, but I suspect it would block access if you were.
- hudibras 8y agoIt's super bad for them. The vast majority of people who play the daily fantasy sports would much rather just bet on the games themselves.
- wycs 8y agoDoes anyone know if this means for general predication markets? The only reasons I've found blockchain at all interesting is for the creation of combinatorial prediction markets. If gambling laws are getting lax enough in some states to allow centralized prediction markets, my interest will wane to zero.
- whataretensors 8y agoEvery time I've looked deeply at blockchain I've seen something different.
- dalbasal 8y agoWell... sports betting does exist legally in all sorts of places inside and outside the US. $5bn in annual last vegas bets, for example. The global market is probably 50-100X larger. Is that a prediction market?
- basementcat 8y agoPrediction markets are already legal in the USA. https://iemweb.biz.uiowa.edu/ https://iemweb.biz.uiowa.edu/ https://www.predictit.org/ https://www.predictit.org/
- Sniffnoy 8y agoThat's not exactly accurate. The government has gone after and shut down prediction markets before. They made an agreement with PredictIt not to, but PredictIt's $850 limit was apparently a big factor in that. I hadn't heard of IEM before. Not sure what's up with that.
- sigstoat 8y agoIEM has received multiple no-action letters, and also has limits. So basically the same situation as PredictIt.
- epmatsw 8y agoThis is super interesting. Seems like the real ruling is that the federal government can’t compel states to implement/enforce non-federal laws. I wonder if that will affect things like the drinking age...
- chipperyman573 8y agoI think "21 = ok to drink" is ingrained enough in American culture that it's not going away. Only time will tell, though.
- wyldfire 8y agoI think that's not the case. Lots of adults were alive when that age limit was eighteen. A small handful were alive when it was prohibited entirely. US (still, despite recent politics) receives immigrants from around the world who have a very different culture with regard to alcohol consumption.
- eric_h 8y agoI certainly didn’t wait til I turned 21. Going to bars was a big part of the social scene at my university, and fake ids were quite common.
- learc83 8y agoIds are getting much harder to fake with REAL ID requirements, and a lot of jurisdictions are very tough on bars that serve to minors even if they had a fake id. An easy way to deter fake ids that was pretty common even a decade ago was to have off duty cops checking ids, so that being discovered can result in jail time instead of just getting kicked out. They even have apps now that can detect most fake ids.
- gowld 8y agoAnd we take another step forward to the authoritarian police state; throwing people in jail for trying to do things that jailers did freely when they were younger, while boosting employment opportunities for the agents of the state to make their money by renting out the privilege of their authoritarian power.
- cm2012 8y agoFiveThirtyEight's non political year value just skyrocketed
- dmix 8y agoIt's not like sports betting wasn't already widely common across the United States. The only difference is that money (and taxes) will be going to US companies directly now instead of off-shore online gambling companies...
- edaemon 8y agoIt was already common enough in the US, but it's downright rare compared to how common it is in the UK or other places where it's legal. Hull, Stoke, West Ham, and Manchester City come to mind -- all big soccer teams who have/had bookmakers emblazoned on their uniforms as the main sponsor. I'm sure that if the US makes sports betting legal we'll see a huge influx of betting companies, apps, etc. Like you said, most of it was handled by foreign companies, but now they'll be able to advertise and grow in the US in earnest.
- iqihs 8y agoSure, they totally haven't been wrong on predicting a countless number of major events in the past and still have credibility to spare /s
- widowlark 8y agoWill this have an impact on bringing back companies like Intrade?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jessriedel 8y agoFrom the ruling: > Congress can regulate sports gambling directly, but if it elects not to do so, each State is free to act on its own. Our job is to interpret the law Congress has enacted and decide whether it is consistent with the Constitution. PASPA is not. PASPA “regulate[s] state governments’ regulation” of their citizens.... The Constitution gives Congress no such power. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-476_dbfi.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-476_dbfi.pdf I don't quite understand what they're saying here...I guess the idea is that Congress can regulate gambling -- assuming some constitutional justification like the commerce clause -- but they can't restrict what laws states pass? (Of course, per drinking ages, they can tax states citizens and then release that tax money back to the states conditional on state s enacting certain laws.) Here is extensive coverage on the excellent SCOTUSblog http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/murphy-v-national-collegiate-athletic-association-2/ http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/murphy-v-national... Other HN submission (Bloomberg article): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17065652 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17065652
- afarrell 8y ago> per drinking ages... It is worth noting that alcohol regulations might be a bit of a special case. It not merely a federal crime but is unconstitutional for a corporation or individual to transport alcohol into a state in violation of the laws of that state.
- jessriedel 8y agoAlthough it's true there are lingering effects from the repeal of prohibition, I don't believe the Supreme Court's ruling on the constitutionality of the national drinking age law drew on that. Rather, I think it was just the difference between directly dictating state law and making funds conditional on it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Dakota_v._Dole#Decision https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Dakota_v._Dole#Decision
- ivl 8y ago> drinking ages The federal government used a bit of a loophole here. Instead of regulating individual states, they simply set a drinking age of 21 as a requirement, else they'll lose 10 percent of their federal highway funds.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- crankylinuxuser 8y agoIt's certainly an interesting judgement.. Whereas Congress can "regulate" and not at the same time. Long story short, it looks like more gambling is in. And the longer view, is more people will be impoverished with more easy to obtain gambling. Sure, a few will win it big, and they will be flaunted out for the city/state/US to see. But on whole, more people will be harmed with this. But I'm sure it shovels money around sufficiently, making the GDP look like it grew by a .1% Good 'ol "Parable of the Broken Window", at it again.
- bryondowd 8y agoI usually consider gambling a form of entertainment. By that note, it's no more impoverishing than anything else people blow their money on for their own amusement. Some people have a gambling problem and spend more than they can afford because they expect they'll win eventually, but unwise spending is hardly unique to gambling.
- LargeWu 8y agoWhile I generally share your sentiment, there's plenty of evidence that gambling is addictive in nature. It's not just a matter of "unwise spending" for those addicted, in the same way an expensive hobby might be.
- Karishma1234 8y agoGambling is fun. >And the longer view, is more people will be impoverished with more easy to obtain gambling As long as they are doing it out of their own choice it is nobody's business.
- moate 8y agoEh...no? Addictions in general tend to breed other, more problematic crime. Nobody feels bad for a junkie who blows all their own money and privately ODs in the street. People get really freaked out when a junkie is robbing people in the street to pay for his fix.
- padobson 8y agoAlito wrote for the majority, joined by Thomas, Gorsuch, Roberts, Kagan and Kennedy. Breyer dissented in part. Ginsberg and Sotomayor dissented completely.
- parvenu74 8y agoJust curious: were there odds published ahead of time on whether the SCOTUS would strike down this law?
- noarchy 8y agoWould this ruling potentially affect federal drug laws? I say this because some US states have chosen to legalize marijuana, despite it remaining illegal at the federal level. This seems like a similar kind of situation.
- tssva 8y agoNo, the Supreme Court didn't rule that Congress couldn't pass laws regarding the regulation of sports gambling and userp state laws. What they ruled is that Congress couldn't choose to not regulate an area and then tell states how they had to regulate the same area. In the case of drug laws there are clear federal laws regulating drug trafficking, so this ruling does nothing to effect the status quo.
- scottyelich 8y ago9,984,535
- throwawaymanbot 8y agoIm sure the Mafia's, Both regular and Russian, are so pleased with their Guy in the white house right now!
- lsiebert 8y agoI think one thing not yet discussed much here is that state authorized gambling is generally akin to a regressive tax, that is the state gets the benefits of new funds, but mainly from the poor, not from the rich.
- str33t_punk 8y agoI know many rich people who love sports betting
- stevew20 8y agoOoooo, I hope the next federal law changes our countries name from "The United States of America" to "Russia"! P.S. please let's all stop supporting our government making more laws. They are shit at it, and we should have MORE freedom, not less. Then we can enjoy life and do stuff, ya know?