By charging Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering—alleging he schemed to remove himself from a 2023 game to guarantee the “under” for prop bets on his statistics—the Department of Justice could open the door for Congress to revisit an area of legislation it has largely punted to the states: sports betting law.
For most of U.S. history, individual states have largely decided whether to allow sports-related gambling activities within their borders.
But that wasn’t true from 1992 to 2018.
In 1992, President George H.W. Bush signed the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act into law. PASPA made it illegal for 46 states to authorize sports betting; Nevada, Delaware, Oregon and Montana were excluded, because they had already adopted sports betting practices. In other words, the federal government forbid 46 states from offering sports betting even if they wished to do so.
At the same time, Congress didn’t establish any federal standard for sports betting—an omission that would later contribute to PASPA’s downfall. The fact that 46 states couldn’t authorize a tax-generating, commercial activity, while four “grandfathered” states could, also became controversial.
The sports world in the early 1990s was starkly different. The Pete Rose scandal—where Rose bet on MLB games while managing the Cincinnati Reds—was fresh in the minds of lawmakers and fans, raising questions about whether games were fixed. There were also major scandals involving Baltimore Colts quarterback Art Schlichter, who bet on NFL games during the 1982 season, and Boston College men’s basketball players who participated in a point-shaving conspiracy in the late 1970s. While sports betting is now associated with major businesses that openly advertise, back then it was often seen as shady, with connections to organized crime.
Congress was moved to act at the urging of the major pro leagues’ commissioners, who testified in 1991 that sports betting undermined the integrity of games and invited corrupt influences.
NBA commissioner David Stern warned that sports betting “inevitably carries with it the suspicion of fixing,” and “every missed shot, turnover and coaching misjudgment will inevitably give rise to speculation, suspicion and accusations of game-fixing and point–shaving.”
NHL president John Ziegler Jr. argued that legalized sports betting invites allegations of “fake injuries.” He also worried that legalization would imply “that gambling and sports are an accepted combination; if they enjoy sports, they will enjoy gambling.”
MLB commissioner Fay Vincent was also a doomsayer—or a prophet. He correctly predicted that athletes would become targets of “underworld figures,” with some athletes being supplied drugs or pressured to share inside “information” or engage in what Vincent coined “selective effort on the playing field.”
Rozier is accused of engaging in a form of “selective effort” by allegedly taking himself out of a game with a fake injury to further an illicit betting conspiracy. Similarly, former Toronto Raptors forward Jontay Porter—whom the NBA banned last year and is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud—removed himself from games for the same purpose.
Pro leagues, along with the NCAA and the Justice Department, fought in court to keep PASPA on the books when then-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie challenged its constitutionality. Christie wanted to legalize sports betting in New Jersey—particularly in Atlantic City—but the Garden State wasn’t among the four states exempted by PASPA. New Jersey argued that PASPA compelled the state to act against its own self-interest, and many states questioned why they couldn’t legalize—and tax—sports betting. It was clear that many Americans were already betting on sports “illegally,” including through offshore websites, and little was being done to stop them.
Although the leagues and the DOJ prevailed before a federal district judge and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, their luck ran out when the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito found that PASPA violated the anticommandeering doctrine, rooted in the 10th Amendment’s protection of states’ rights, and forbids Congress from ordering states to adopt a specific regulatory scheme when the federal government itself hasn’t enacted such a scheme.
Fast forward to 2025: 39 states, along with Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, have legalized sports betting. Pro leagues, which long preached that betting was immoral and should be illegal, are now partnered with sports betting companies. These partnerships have generated new sources of revenue for owners and players.
Meanwhile, it’s difficult to watch a game without seeing betting odds flash on the screen, just as it’s hard to avoid advertisements urging consumers to bet on sports. This has led legal scholars and public health experts to advocate for increased regulation of sports betting, including at the federal level.
Remember that Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association doesn’t prevent the federal government from regulating sports betting; it only prevents the federal government from barring states from offering sports betting when there’s no federal regulatory scheme in place.
Congress acting on sports betting isn’t a new idea. In a 2014 New York Times op-ed, NBA commissioner Adam Silver proposed federal legalization and regulation of sports betting.
More recently, U.S. Rep. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.) and U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) introduced the Supporting Affordability and Fairness with Every Bet Act, or “SAFE Bet Act.” The Act would generally prohibit sports wagering except in states that meet certain criteria, such as banning sports betting ads from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. local time or during live broadcasts of sporting events, forbidding deceptive advertising schemes and instituting a minimum age of 21.
The odds of Congress swiftly acting on the SAFE Bet Act—or any other legislation—are zero at the moment. The federal government shutdown is now in its 28th day, with no end in sight.
But at some point, the shutdown will end, and Congress may find the timing right to take up sports betting legislation.
The range of legal and health issues at stake is vast.
The latest NBA gambling scandal allegedly involves the mafia and, as Eben Novy-Williams explained in a recent Sportico column, could reveal that players—like Porter last year—were blackmailed or pressured to participate. Those concerns were anticipated by league commissioners in the early 1990s but downplayed by their successors.
The consumer side could also prove important to Congress. As someone who teaches law students—many of whom are recent college graduates—I’m struck by how many of them bet on sports. I shouldn’t be. A couple of years ago, the NCAA released a study finding that 67% of college students living on campus had engaged in sports betting, 41% had bet on their school’s teams, and 35% had used a student bookmaker.
How many college students will lose more than they win? How many will become gambling addicts and go into debt, and how might that affect their relationships, friendships and nascent careers?
Those questions are different from whether NBA players are feigning injuries and how the league responds, but they all highlight the challenges of a sports economy so heavily tied to betting.
Sherman Silverstein partner Alan Milstein, chair of his firm’s litigation department and an attorney who has represented Allen Iverson, Carmelo Anthony, Eddy Curry, Maurice Clarett, and other major sports figures, told Sportico, “The only surprising thing about the current NBA betting scandal is how little money was involved considering the salaries of the accused.”
He also reflected, “It is too late to put the rabbit back in the hat,” since “after decades” of lobbying against sports gambling, “the leagues have embraced the new world order like lovers reunited after lengthy separations.”
If Congress reengages with sports betting, it may also need to weigh prediction markets. Several states and tribes in California are currently in litigation with prediction-market platform Kalshi, saying event contract exchanges resemble sports wagering and should be governed by sports betting laws. Kalshi maintains it is protected by federal law, which entrusts the Commodity Futures Trading Commission with exclusive jurisdiction over commodities and futures exchanges.
It’s important to acknowledge that even if Congress passes—and President Donald Trump signs into law—legislation creating a federal standard on sports betting, that law could be challenged as interfering with states’ rights.
To that point, New Hampshire Lottery and Gaming Commission executive director Charlie McIntyre told Sportico that while Congress “wants to act,” gaming “has always been a state issue.” This authority derives from the 10th Amendment, which states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
McIntyre also “questions the wisdom” of Congress getting involved, saying, “I don’t think legalizing sports betting” in the aftermath of Murphy has made corruption issues “worse.” He highlighted how several major sports betting scandals—including one involving former NBA referee Tim Donaghy—all predated Murphy.
McIntyre further pointed out that states that have legalized sports betting can detect wrongdoing and act accordingly under state law.
“Certainly, we track all wagering and look for any anomalies in bets,” McIntyre said. “A prop bet way out of whack usually sets off flags.”
Whether the next major legal discussions about sports betting happen mainly in statehouses or in the halls of Congress remains to be seen—but it would certainly make for an interesting bet.