Another bad bet

The Legislature has a gambling addiction. Whether goaded by promises of elusive jackpots of tax revenues or deluded by phony dreams of economic revitalization, lawmakers keep pushing to make it easier for New Yorkers to throw their money away in what amounts to a regressive levy on the poor, even though the state Constitution prohibits “pool-selling, bookmaking, or any other kind of gambling” with one small exception.

Are those words worth the paper they’re printed on? Apparently not. In 2016, Albany declared that interactive fantasy sports — meaning, putting down cash on made-up teams whose performance depends on players’ actual stats in a given game — was not a game of chance. Ludicrous.

The courts agreed with basic human logic, understanding that newfangled fantasy offered by the likes of FanDuel and DraftKings must therefore be confined to seven casinos, the only narrow exceptions to the Constitution’s ban. After a trial judge struck down the law in 2018, the state appealed and lost again this month before an appellate panel. The state’s highest court has to see it the same way.

Undeterred, legislators now aim to legalize mobile sports betting via smartphones. Their claim is it’s kosher because bets will technically be made on computer servers located at casinos. Get out of here. That’s no different from sitting in Manhattan and calling a roulette wager into an upstate casino via telephone, which is illegal. The Constitution only permits “gambling at no more than seven facilities.”

For once, the house must not win.