U.S. Supreme Court Strikes Down Federal Sports-Wagering Ban | Hacker News Reader

U.S. Supreme Court Strikes Down Federal Sports-Wagering Ban

bloomberg.com

30 pointsuptown22 comments

This 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...

Or marriage iguana !

That's a bit off.

The question in this case was regarding a federal law that "prohibits modification or repeal of state-law prohibitions."

In short, "we are making a law that says you have to make a law." It's not about using the states to act as enforcement of federal laws, or to comply with federal laws - it's about commandeering their regulatory authority. And, I'd say correctly, the regulatory powers reserved to the states belong to, explicitly, the states. SCOTUS was quite correct in breaking this in half.

For what it's worth, the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 was upheld by the Supreme Court in South Dakota v. Dole (1987), a case referenced extensively in the more recent NFIB v. Sebelius, the Obamacare challenge.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Dakota_v._Dole

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Federation_of_Indepen...

This feels like a pretty weird ruling that is all about the details of how the federal law was enacted, rather than the intent, i.e. if the folks writing the 1992 law were told of this ruling they probably could have written a law that achieved the desired results and not run afoul of this ruling.

That's the way it's supposed to work. The Supreme Court isn't interested in whether a law is effective, just whether it exceeds Constitutional restrictions on power.

It's up to Congress to make sure things work, and if the court breaks something, Congress can often just rewrite things in a bit less heavy handed fashion and get things working again.

I guess, my argument would be that the Supreme Court should look at "would a law with this same intent/effect pass constitutional muster if written differently? and how meaningful would the differences be".

Otherwise this is just a game of legal gotcha that gives more power to the Supreme Court than it should really have.

And what then? We can't have them rewriting, or even reinterpreting it, that would be a huge increase to their power. We can't have them just saying it's fine because if it were different it would be fine. It does matter how it was enacted and under whose authority. If we let that slide even a little bit, we'll immediately have power struggles between competing authorities. I doubt the people who wrote the law that is now being shot down would want the court operating differently, though they might not like the decision.

> And what then? We can't have them rewriting, or even reinterpreting it, that would be a huge increase to their power.

But it is already up to the courts to interpret the law.

I really don't think it's a stretch to say "look, we think this law was written poorly, but we think that this part of the law could have been written just fine, so we're going to go with that".

I see what you're saying, and sometimes it happens that way, like Roberts overlooking the discrepancy between tax and penalty in the Affordable Care Act.

Writing sloppy laws is like writing sloppy code, it catches up with you, and is tougher to fix the deeper it is. I wouldn't hire someone to write software who said, "Look, I think this code was written poorly, but I think that this part of the code could have been written just fine, so I'm going to just go with that"

There is a difference between interpreting what the law would have intended where an unforseen circumstance arises, and just reinterpreting it as fine even though it has overstepped the authority. In this case, federal power was overstepped in telling the states how to legislate.

> This feels like a pretty weird ruling that is all about the details of how the federal law was enacted, rather than the intent,

Intent may be a factor in resolving ambiguities in the text of the law, but the perceived goal of a law does not substitute for the text of the law in determining what the law is. For a law to be valid, it must be within the Constitutional power of government as written, not just serving an apparent purpose that some other formulation might validly address.

Aside from the problem of transferring legislative power to the judiciary, your apparent preference here would not give citizens subject to the law notice of its actual parameters, since the “real” law restricting their behavior might be something unrecognizable in detail from the text of the adopted law that happens to serve what some court sees as the same purpose the legislature sought with the text they adopted.

The drinking age is 92% state law. However, the federal government will withhold some (8%) highway funds for states that allow the purchase and possession (but not necessarily consumption) under 21.

I never quite understood the objections to this. As long as someone isn’t using credit cards, and there’s maybe some limits on how much they can bet per day, so they don’t totally sell the house, I don’t quite understand the objections or restrictions on sports betting. I never quite understood the objections to this. As long as someone isn’t using credit cards, and there’s maybe some limits on how much they can bet per day, so they don’t totally sell the house, I don’t quite understand the objections or restrictions on sports betting. Potential revenue for states, not to mention for some of the gamblers, I think far outweighs the risks of abuse.

The “sell the house” scenario is already possible with any other gambling. No reason sports gambling should be different from that perspective.

The laws aren't for protecting the gamblers, they are for protecting the sport. The concern being that if gambling on sports is a real industry, then the outcomes of the games may get artificially "adjusted" by nefarious parties.

Billions are already wagered offshore on all major sports. Making it illegal just makes it more difficult to protect the integrity of the game.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but that's not the kind of thinking the US government has historically used.

I know the NBA is very interested in making gambling happen and they have some deep pockets to get it there and this is one of Adam Silver's main goals right now. From my listening to NBA podcasts about it, and of interest to HN users is that the NBA wants the technology to the point where people in the stands can bet on their smartphones about things as granular as "will X player make a three pointer on the next possession, etc."

The law is weird all around... the NBA originally supported it. It was sponsored by NJ Senator/former NBA player Bill Bradley. It gave NJ a 1-year window to legalize sports gambling and be grandfathered in... which they declined to do at the time.

The NBA now supports it. Trump supported repealing it while campaigning but the solicitor general opposed it at the supreme court...

Can't wait for the flood of e-sports betting sites - could be a big market in addition to the more traditional sports

The flood is already here. I can bet, with a credit card, on basically any competitive game I can watch on Twitch. I have been for years now. I'm waiting for regulation floods, not more sketchy sites.

Would this affect the outcome for InTrade?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com