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Lawsuit might pave way for sports bets in Eastern Connecticut casinos By WILLIAM SOKOLIC For The Norwich Bulletin Posted Apr 06, 2009 The weekend’s Final Four climaxes a month of college basketball tournaments in which the elite of the sport battle for U.S. supremacy in what’s known as March Madness.
The tournament also tallies big bucks among sports bettors, from the ubiquitous office bracket pool to bookies to Las Vegas casinos. With the University of Connecticut’s men and women’s teams perennial participants, the flow of money is likely huge throughout Connecticut.
Outside of Las Vegas, most of the wagering is illegal. However, if a lawsuit filed by New Jersey state Sen. Raymond Lesniak succeeds, the floodgates of legalized sports betting could open in every state — including Connecticut.
The suit, filed March 23 in U.S. District Court in Newark, seeks to overturn a 1992 federal ban against sports betting in all states except a handful grandfathered in. In addition to Nevada, Delaware, Montana and Oregon can enact sports betting.
“I don’t think it’s a long shot or else I wouldn’t have filed it,” Lesniak said.
Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods would salivate at the opportunity.
“We’d love to have a sports book,” Mohegan Sun CEO Mitchell Etess said. “I have no doubt sports betting would create a lot of excitement during a lot of times of the year, It would be a terrific driver of people to the property.”
Foxwoods did not return a call for comment.
State must approve
But it’s not just a matter of a federal law overturned, according to state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal. The compact between the state and the tribes would need to be amended, as would the federal laws regarding Indian gaming, he said.
“The authority for any sort of gambling comes from the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, which sets forth the forms of gaming permitted and authorized,” he said.
The gaming act says tribes are entitled to any gambling permissible in the state. “Sports betting was never a form of permitted gambling,” Blumenthal said.
Not everyone agrees the state would have to enter the picture.
If federal law supersedes state law, then a successful suit to eliminate the ban could mean sports betting is allowed on tribal land without state approval, said Clyde W. Barrow, director of the Center for Policy Analysis at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth.
“My interpretation would be they would need no permission from Connecticut,” Barrow said. That would provide an immense source of revenue without any of it going to the state, he added.
More gambling addicts
Regardless, all sides should tread lightly, said Marvin A. Steinberg, executive director of the Connecticut Council on Problem Gaming. While office pools for things such as the NCAA tournament are legal in Connecticut, adding sports betting at the casinos should require a lot of scrutiny to determine the social costs versus the gains, he said.
“Legislators have a knee-jerk reaction to think of new forms of gambling. But there’s a serious downside. A certain percentage of the gambling population will develop a problem and lives will be ruined as a result.”
Some 10 percent of the calls to the council concern sports betting, Steinberg said.
Unconstitutional
Lesniak expects the Justice Department to file a reply to his suit within 45 days. He touts a “kitchen sink of constitutional violations” in the federal ban.
According to the suit, the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 violates:
The 14th Amendment by being unconstitutionally discriminatory.
The 5th Amendment by being unduly broad and vague.
The 10th Amendment by regulating a matter that is reserved to the states.
The 11th Amendment by empowering private parties — sports organizations — to enforce its
provisions over other private parties.
The 1st Amendment by having a chilling effect on efforts to enact legislation to legalize and regulate sports betting in New Jersey and raise revenues for the state.
‘Unlikely to prevail’
In spite of the optimism from New Jersey, the suit is “unlikely to prevail,” Barrow said.
If it does, Steinberg understands the temptation in Connecticut and elsewhere; people gamble illegally anyway, so why not capitalize on that? Still, he suggests waiting for a new study on the impact of legalized gambling in Connecticut, the first such report since 1996.
“It would be wrong to introduce any different form of gaming until the results come out,” he said. http://www.norwichbulletin.com/ |
