Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Assn.
The Court struck down the federal law that barred states from legalizing sports betting, ruling that Congress cannot order state legislatures to keep laws on the books or forbid them from repealing their own bans.
Because the whole federal sports-gambling law was built around that unconstitutional command, the Court struck down the entire statute rather than just the offending piece, clearing the way for states nationwide to legalize sports betting if they choose.
“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.”
Explaining why barring states from repealing their own gambling bans amounts to commandeering state legislatures.
How it got here: A federal trial court and the Third Circuit, sitting en banc, ruled that New Jersey's 2014 law violated PASPA; New Jersey and horsemen's groups asked the Supreme Court to review that ruling.
The Case in Depth
What happened
New Jersey wanted to legalize sports betting at Atlantic City casinos and horseracing tracks to help its struggling gambling industry compete. A federal law, the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), generally barred states from authorizing sports betting. The NCAA and major professional sports leagues sued to stop New Jersey's 2014 law, which repealed parts of the state's own sports-betting ban rather than affirmatively legalizing it.
The question before the Court
Could Congress bar New Jersey from repealing its own state-law ban on sports betting, effectively forcing the state to keep the ban in place?
The Court's answer
No — the Court ruled that Congress cannot bar a state from repealing its own laws against sports betting, because doing so is really just another way of ordering a state legislature what it may and may not do. The Constitution's anticommandeering principle means Congress can regulate people directly, but it cannot direct state governments' lawmaking, whether by compelling them to pass a law or forbidding them from repealing one.
Because the law's core provisions were unconstitutional and the rest of the statute was built to work together with them, the Court struck down the entire federal sports-gambling law rather than leaving any piece standing. States are now free to legalize and regulate sports betting on their own, though Congress could still choose to regulate the activity directly and uniformly nationwide.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
States can now legalize and regulate sports betting on their own, opening the door to a multibillion-dollar industry of casinos, racetracks, and mobile betting apps that quickly spread across the country after this decision. Sports leagues lost their main legal tool for blocking state-level legalization, and lawmakers in dozens of states moved to write their own sports-betting rules.
What changes now
This is a final merits decision, not a temporary order. With PASPA struck down in its entirety, states are free to legalize and regulate sports betting as they see fit, and many quickly did so in the years following the ruling. No further proceedings are required in this case, though the decision's anticommandeering reasoning may affect other federal laws that direct state governments' regulatory choices.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide that Congress lacks power to regulate sports gambling directly and uniformly nationwide — it only held that Congress cannot achieve that goal by ordering state legislatures what laws to pass or repeal. Congress remains free to pass its own direct, nationwide restrictions on sports betting.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Thomas
Justice Thomas joined the majority in full but wrote separately to question the Court's severability doctrine generally. He argued that courts historically lacked power to 'excise' portions of statutes and that asking what Congress would have hypothetically wanted is not a proper judicial inquiry, though he agreed no party asked the Court to revisit that doctrine here.
Concurrence in part — Justice Breyer
Justice Breyer agreed with the majority's anticommandeering holding striking down the ban on state authorization and licensing, joining all of the opinion except Part VI-B. But he argued that the separate provision restricting private individuals' sports-betting operations should have been left standing, since it independently and directly regulates private conduct rather than commanding the states.
Dissent — Justice Ginsburg
“The Court wields an ax to cut down §3702 instead of using a scalpel to trim the statute.”Criticizing the majority for striking down the entire law rather than just the unconstitutional provisions.
Justice Ginsburg agreed that the provisions barring states from authorizing or licensing sports betting were unconstitutional commandeering, but argued the majority went too far by striking down the entire law. She would have preserved the provisions banning states and private parties from operating, sponsoring, or promoting sports-gambling schemes, since those directly regulate conduct rather than commandeering state legislatures.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court first had to decide what the word 'authorize' meant in the federal law, since New Jersey's 2014 law was framed as a repeal rather than an outright legalization. It concluded that repealing an existing state ban on sports betting counts as 'authorizing' the activity, because it frees people who were previously forbidden to act to do so.
- The Court then applied the anticommandeering principle — the rule that Congress cannot issue direct orders to state legislatures, because the Constitution gives Congress power to regulate people, not to command state governments. This rule traces to the Tenth Amendment's reservation of all non-federal legislative power to the states.
- The Court reasoned that a law prohibiting a state from repealing its own statute is functionally identical to a law commanding a state to keep that statute in place — the distinction between an affirmative command and a prohibition on repeal is empty, because either way Congress is dictating what a state legislature may or may not enact.
- The Court rejected the argument that the sports-betting ban was a valid exercise of Congress's power to preempt state law, explaining that true preemption must regulate private conduct directly, not merely tell states what laws to pass; the provision at issue did neither, since it created no federal right or restriction applicable to private bettors.
- Having found the core provisions unconstitutional, the Court asked whether Congress would have wanted the rest of the statute to survive without them, and concluded it would not, because the remaining provisions were designed to work together with the invalid ones and would produce results Congress never intended if left standing alone.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms New York v. United States (505 U. S. 144)
Relied on as the foundational case establishing that Congress cannot commandeer state legislatures.
Reaffirms Printz v. United States (521 U. S. 898)
Relied on as extending the anticommandeering rule to state executive officers, supporting the Court's reasoning here.
Distinguishes South Carolina v. Baker (485 U. S. 505)
Distinguished because that law regulated states and private parties evenhandedly rather than dictating state legislation.
Distinguishes Reno v. Condon (528 U. S. 141)
Distinguished because that law applied equally to state and private actors rather than commanding state lawmaking.
Distinguishes Hodel v. Virginia Surface Mining & Reclamation Assn., Inc. (452 U. S. 264)
Distinguished as a valid cooperative-federalism scheme that gave states a real choice, unlike PASPA's flat command.
Distinguishes FERC v. Mississippi (456 U. S. 742)
Distinguished because that law only required states to consider federal standards, not to enact or refrain from enacting laws.