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Comment by pdabbadabba | Hacker News Reader

I don't think this is correct. As I read it, the issue was that, as others have said, the federal government attempted to regulate what laws a state could pass (which is related to a broader body of law about federal laws that compel states* to enact certain laws or to implement federal laws). Note, however, that this not to say that congress can't make its own laws and that, if it does, they would override state laws.

Maybe one way of summing this up that makes more sense of the distinction is this: Congress can make laws that regulate behavior as a general matter (subject to other constitutional restrictions), but cannot regulate directly the behavior of state governments themselves.

It's unusual for congress to do the former but not the latter, but that appears to have been the case here.

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Why would Congress do this? Is it because there is some other constitutional requirement they would be in violation of if they just made it illegal at the federal level?

1. There would be a backlash for outlawing it where it was already legal, and hence had an industry depending on it. In fact, there was an option to even legalize it in places so long as they did it within a year.

2. Enforcing it at the federal level costs money. It's easier to pass a ban where you force the states to pay the costs.

Yes, the Tenth Amendment reserves powers not explicitly given to the federal government to the states and the people. Local sports and poker betting is already regulated by the states and a federal interstate commerce claim to regulate it is fairly weak.

Pursuant to Gonzales v. Raich, which ruled that Congress could criminalize the production and use of homegrown marijuana for personal use, the interstate effect of gambling in any form on any activity is almost certainly sufficient for Congress to regulate or prohibit any or all gambling activity.

In addition, the Ninth Circuit has held that Congress has Commerce Clause authority to criminalize possession of homemade machine guns.

Congress has chosen to allow states to regulate gambling to a certain extent, which explains its legality in various forms in the various states.

> Why would Congress do this?

To transfer enforcement costs, including for hosting civil actions outside of the situations where state law claims get into federal court, to state law enforcement and courts.

Expanding a bit on some of the reasons others have given, in this case I think it was also an attempt to grandfather a few states where sports betting was legal. There would have been obvious problems with banning sports betting in, e.g., every state but Nevada. But banning state legislatures from authorizing it (if it wasn't authorized already) seemed, perhaps, less problematic.

The classic problematic rationale, that the court discusses in cases like Printz [1] is also dislocation of the political costs of enforcement away from federal officials onto state officials.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printz_v._United_States

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