A West Virginia lawmaker has introduced a bill to legalize sports betting in the state in defiance of a longstanding federal prohibition on the activity.
The bill, H 2751, sponsored by Rep. Shawn Fluharty, was unveiled in the midst of a new pro-sports betting report from a Washington, D.C., think tank and a growing chorus of voices from statehouses nationwide, together with the casino industry, calling on Congress to repeal or amend the ban.
Figuring prominently in Fluharty’s bill is language referencing an amicus brief filed by West Virginia in support of New Jersey’s ongoing bid to have the ban overturned in the U.S. Supreme Court.
To date, federal courts have consistently struck down New Jersey’s attempts to institute sports betting as a violation of the 1992 U.S. Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act. PASPA, as it’s known, was intended to combat the spread of illegal sports betting and provided a path for states to regulate the activity on their own, giving them a year to do so. None did, including New Jersey, whose Atlantic City casinos opposed the competition. The result is that legal sports betting has been restricted ever since to the four states where it existed prior to PASPA: Nevada, Montana, Oregon and Delaware, with only Nevada permitted to offer wagering on individual games.
In the decades since, as casino gambling has proliferated nationwide, competition among tax-hungry states has intensified, and Congress has come under increasing pressure to rethink PASPA. New Jersey, whose casino market was shattered by the twin blows of the 2008-09 recession and an explosion of regional competition, has been in the forefront of the repeal movement.
The Washington, D.C.-based American Gaming Association, a lobbying group whose membership includes casino operators and suppliers, has made repealing PASPA a top priority.
Bolstering that effort is a new report titled “Time to End the Madness around March Madness” from the libertarian-leaning Competitive Enterprise Institute. The report estimates Americans spend between $150 billion and $400 billion a year on sports gambling?95 to 99 percent of it illegally?and argues that “Legalizing sports betting would produce substantial social and political benefits by exposing billions of dollars in economic activity to the sunshine of legitimacy.”
Authors Steven Titch and Michelle Minton write, “Decriminalization would renew respect for the law by individuals who see gambling on sports as a valid form of entertainment for adults. Allowing bookies and authorities to work together to stop match fixing—which is in both of their interests—would bolster the integrity of sports.”
Currently, nearly half the states in the U.S. have introduced bills to regulate online fantasy sports, and last year, eight states legalized it. So far in 20017, bills regulating sports betting are being floated in Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, South Carolina, and now, West Virginia.
“Our state attorney general is challenging the usurpation of the federal government of state authority to regulate sports pool betting,” says Fluharty’s bill, which asserts “the U.S. Congress has no power to prevent state governments from authorizing sports betting as a form of gaming, and therefore the Legislature finds that it is reasonable and appropriate for the State of West Virginia to proceed with legalizing sports pool betting pursuant to this article.”
H 2751 would place sports betting in West Virginia under the authority of the state Lottery Commission, which would set rules and licensing fees.
Betting on college sports and other amateur events, including the Olympics, would be illegal.
Significantly, the bill proposes a tax on wagers instead of operator revenues, requiring bookmakers?which likely would include the state’s four land-based casinos?to pay 2 percent of all bets into a new “Sports Betting Special Revenue Fund”.
