US Congress has postponed next week’s sports betting hearing, while New York legislators have failed to pass a bill in time to legalize sports wagering this year. Earlier this week, it was revealed that the House Judiciary Committee had set a tentative date of June 26 for the hearing. The NFL American football league was one of a number of parties that had been invited to testify at the hearing, which was to focus last month’s Supreme Court ruling on the federal 1992 Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA). Both Delaware and New Jersey have since passed legislation to…

The Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), which Congress passed in 1992, forbids states from “authorizing” sports betting “by law.” As every middle-schooler learns, however, our Constitution establishes dual sovereignty between the states and the federal government. And as the Supreme Court most recently held in New York v. United States (1992) and Printz v. United States (1997), the Constitution forbids Congress from “commandeering” state officials to serve federal ends, whether by forcing states to enforce federal laws or to pass new state laws (or to refrain from repealing old ones), which is exactly what PASPA does. In 2011,…

Lawmakers from both the Republican and Democratic parties who want to ban online gambling have introduced legislation in the House and Senate. According to the Associated Press news agency, the bills are aimed at reversing a decision in 2011 by Attorney General Eric Holder that a 1961 law used to ban internet gambling only applied to sports betting. The new bills would expand prohibition to where it originally stood before the 2011 ruling. New Jersey, Delaware and Nevada are the only three states to have legalized online gaming since the 2011 ruling, but a number of other states have also…