Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/17pdf/16-476_dbfi.pdf
Page Number: 29.0

Cite as:  584 U. S. ____ (2018) 

25 

Opinion of the Court 

the  constitutionality  of  the  anti-authorization  provision,
we  should  nevertheless  affirm  based  on  PASPA’s  prohibi­
tion  of  state  “licens[ing]”  of  sports  gambling.    Brief  for 
Respondents  43,  n. 10;  Brief  for  United  States  34–35. 
Although  New  Jersey’s  2014  Act  does  not  expressly  pro­
vide  for  the  licensing  of  sports  gambling  operations,  re­
spondents  and  the  United  States  contend  that  the  law 
effectively  achieves  that  result  because  the  only  entities
that  it  authorizes  to  engage  in  that  activity,  i.e.,  casinos 
and racetracks, are already required to be licensed.  Ibid. 

We  need  not  decide  whether  the  2014  Act  violates 
PASPA’s  prohibition  of  state  “licens[ing]”  because  that 
provision suffers from the same defect as the prohibition of 
state  authorization.  It  issues  a  direct  order  to  the  state 
legislature.29  Just as Congress lacks the power to order a
state  legislature  not  to  enact  a  law  authorizing  sports 
gambling,  it  may  not  order  a  state  legislature  to  refrain
from enacting a law licensing sports gambling.30 

B 
We  therefore  turn  to  the  question  whether,  as  petition­
ers  maintain,  our  decision  regarding  PASPA’s  prohibition 
of  the  authorization  and  licensing  of  sports  gambling
operations  dooms  the  remainder  of  the  Act.    In  order  for 
other  PASPA  provisions  to  fall,  it  must  be  “evident  that 

—————— 

29 Even if the prohibition of state licensing were not itself unconstitu­
tional,  we  do  not  think  it  could  be  severed  from  the  invalid  provision 
forbidding  state  authorization.    The  provision  of  PASPA  giving  New 
Jersey  the  option  of  legalizing  sports  gambling  within  one  year  of
enactment  applied  only  to  casinos  operated  “pursuant  to  a  compre- 
hensive  system  of  State  regulation.”    §3704(a)(3)(B).    This  shows 
that  Congress  preferred  tightly  regulated  sports  gambling  over  total
deregulation.

30 The  dissent  apparently  disagrees  with  our  holding  that  the  provi­
sions  forbidding  state  authorization  and  licensing  violate  the  anticom­
mandering principle, but it provides no explanation for its position.