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12  MURPHY v. NATIONAL COLLEGIATE ATHLETIC ASSN. 

Opinion of the Court 

it  also  gives  those  now  free  to  conduct  a  sports  betting
operation  the  “right  or  authority  to  act”;  it  “empowers”
them (respondents’ and the United States’s definition).

The  concept  of  state  “authorization”  makes  sense  only 
against a backdrop of prohibition or regulation.  A State is 
not  regarded  as  authorizing  everything  that  it  does  not 
prohibit  or  regulate.    No  one  would  use  the  term  in  that 
way.  For example, no one would say that a State “author­
izes” its residents to brush their teeth or eat apples or sing
in  the  shower.    We  commonly  speak  of  state  authoriza- 
tion  only  if  the  activity  in  question  would  otherwise  be 
restricted.28 

The  United  States  counters  that,  even  if  the  term  “au­
thorize,”  standing  alone,  is  interpreted  as  petitioners
claim, PASPA contains additional language that precludes
that  reading.    The  provision  at  issue  refers  to  “author­
iz[ation]  by  law,”  §3702(1)  (emphasis  added),  and  the 
parallel  provision  governing  private  conduct,  §3702(2),
applies to conduct done “pursuant to the law . . . of a gov­
ernmental entity.”  The United States maintains that one 
“would  not  naturally  describe  a  person  conducting  a 
sports-gambling operation that  is merely left unregulated 
as acting ‘pursuant to’ state law.”  Brief for United States 
18.  But  one  might  well  say  exactly  that  if  the  person 
previously  was  prohibited  from  engaging  in  the  activity.
(“Now  that  the  State  has  legalized  the  sale  of  marijuana,
Joe is able to sell the drug pursuant to state law.”) 

The  United  States  also  claims  to  find  support  for  its
interpretation  in  the  fact  that  the  authorization  ban  ap- 

—————— 

28 See, e.g., A. McCullum, Vermont’s legal recreational marijuana law: 
What you should know, USA Today Network (Jan. 23, 2018), online at
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/ 2018/ 01 /23 / vermont­
legal-marijuana-law-what-know/1056869001/  (“Vermont  . . .  bec[ame]
the  first  [State]  in  the  country  to  authorize  the  recreational  use  of 
[marijuana] by an act of a state legislature.” (emphasis added)).