Murphy v. NCAA
In Murphy v. NCAA (2018), the U.S. Supreme Court expanded the anti-commandeering principle in order to allow states to authorize gambling on sports. By March 2022, a total of 33 states and Washington, D.C., had enacted laws legalizing sports gambling in their jurisdictions.
Writing for the 7-2 Court, Justice Sam Alito held that a federal law (the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), 28 U.S.C.S. § 3702(1)) improperly commandeered state legislatures by prohibiting them from authorizing gambling on sports, for a few states that were allowed to do so initially. The dissenting justices (Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg) would have found the commandeering provision to be severable from the PASPA, and interpreted the federal law as banning sports gambling directly.
Since then, at least one court (the Ninth Circuit) has used this decision to allow a state (California) to flout federal immigration laws:
| “ | SB 54 may well frustrate the federal government's immigration enforcement efforts. However, whatever the wisdom of the underlying policy adopted by California, that frustration is permissible, because California has the right, pursuant to the anticommandeering rule, to refrain from assisting with federal efforts. The United States stresses that, in crafting the INA, Congress expected cooperation between states and federal immigration authorities. That is likely the case. But when questions of federalism are involved, we must distinguish between expectations and requirements. In this context, the federal government was free to expect as much as it wanted, but it could not require California's cooperation without running afoul of the Tenth Amendment. | ” |
United States v. California, No. 18-16496 (9th Cir. Apr. 18, 2019).
