Del. Governor Isn't Throwing in the Towel on Sports Betting Law

Still clinging to the hope of bringing Las Vegas-style sports betting to his state, Delaware Gov. Jack Markell has asked a federal appeals court to reconsider its decision barring the state from offering single-game wagers on all sports.

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in late August that Delaware's bid to allow point-spread wagers on single games would violate the federal Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act.

The 1992 law bars the spread of sports gambling except in the four states that previously had it: Delaware, Montana, Nevada and Oregon.

In its decision the 3rd Circuit noted that each exempt state could continue to offer sports wagering under the federal statute only "to the extent that the state conducted such activities between 1976 and 1990."

But in a petition for rehearing, Markell say the court erred in holding that Congress passed PASPA with the intention of prohibiting how Delaware defined and expanded its so-called "sports lottery" law.

The lawsuit began in early August when the National Football League and other professional leagues sought to block the expansion of Delaware's sports gambling law in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware.

Because Delaware permitted only parlay betting on NFL games from 1976 to 1990, it cannot now offer betting on a single game or betting on any other type of sporting event, the leagues argued.

A parlay is a single bet that joins together two or more individual wagers and is dependent upon all of those wagers winning together.

The leagues petitioned the 3rd Circuit for an emergency injunction in the case Aug. 20 after the District Court denied the request.

After nearly two hours of oral arguments, the panel agreed with the leagues in a one-page order that Delaware's plan, originally set to go into effect Sept. 1, is not covered by the PASPA exemption.

The panel set even more specific parameters in a written opinion released Aug. 31.

"Under federal law Delaware may institute multi-game (parlay) betting on at least three NFL games," Judge Thomas Hardiman wrote for the unanimous panel.

To expand the very manner in which Delaware conducts gambling activities to new sports or to new forms of gambling beyond the extent of what the state conducted in 1976 "would engender the very ills that PASPA sought to combat," he added.

Markell contends in his petition for rehearing that Congress never intended to stop Delaware from expanding its sports lottery to non-NFL sports.

Nowhere in PASPA, he argues, does Congress specifically "limit the parameters of Delaware's exempted lottery scheme."

The only legal constraint on Delaware is the breadth of what constitutes a "lottery" under state control, and that, the governor says, is "a question of state law."

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