Supreme Court Ruling Favors Sports Betting

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court struck down a 1992 federal law on Monday that effectively banned commercial sports betting in most states, opening the door to legalizing the estimated $150 billion in illegal wagers on professional and amateur sports that Americans make every year.

The decision seems certain to result in profound changes to the nation’s relationship with sports wagering. Bettors will no longer be forced into the black market to use offshore wagering operations or illicit bookies. Placing bets will be done on mobile devices, fueled and endorsed by the lawmakers and sports officials who opposed it for so long. A trip to Las Vegas to wager on March Madness or the Super Bowl could soon seem quaint.

The law the decision overturned — the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act — prohibited states from authorizing sports gambling. Among its sponsors was Senator Bill Bradley, Democrat of New Jersey and a former college and professional basketball star. He said the law was needed to safeguard the integrity of sports.

But the court said the law was unconstitutional. “It is as if federal officers were installed in state legislative chambers and were armed with the authority to stop legislators from voting on any offending proposals,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said, writing for the majority. “A more direct affront to state sovereignty is not easy to imagine.”

Across the country, state officials and representatives of the casino industry greeted the ruling with something like glee, nowhere more than in New Jersey, which anticipated the decision and had been prepared to quickly take advantage of it.

In 2011, the state’s voters passed a constitutional amendment in favor of legalizing sports betting, and three years later, the Legislature repealed its law against sports betting. Both were challenged in court. But now the Legislature only has to pass a law establishing the rules and regulations for sanctioned sports betting to begin at casinos and racetracks in the state.