In short
Episode covers three legal-news segments.
- SCOTUS campaign finance: In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court struck down federal limits on political party spending, reversing a 25-year precedent. Majority (Justice Brett Kavanaugh) says the First Amendment requires the caps to be “closely and narrowly tailored,” and that existing guardrails—individual contribution caps, anti-earmarking rules, and disclosure—are enough. Dissent (Justice Elena Kagan) warns the ruling enables quid pro quo corruption by letting parties function as “checking accounts,” potentially paying candidates’ bills (e.g., electricity/rent/ads) using large donations. Notable examples: the National Republican Senatorial Committee challenge; discussion of Citizens United and McCutcheon as part of a broader rollback trend.
Guest
Andrew Shapiro, Quinn Emanuel appellate partner; former U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic.
- Trans sports: SCOTUS upheld state bans on transgender girls/women competing on female teams under Equal Protection and Title IX. Majority says “sex” means biological sex/sex assigned at birth; intermediate scrutiny supports safety and competitive fairness without case-by-case exceptions. Liberals concur on Title IX but dissent on equal protection, arguing more fact-finding was needed (e.g., BPJ’s puberty blockers). Notable examples: Bostock distinction; Trump administration enforcement and Alliance Defending Freedom lawsuits.
Guest
Zane McNeil, attorney at Lawyers for Good Government (Gender Justice and Health Equity).
- Sports betting probe: Federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment alleging a conspiracy to manipulate “prop bets” by underperforming/overperforming (e.g., points/rebounds) to hit side parlay wagers. Notable examples: Malik Beasley and Edward Davis; specific games listed; prior indictments involving Terry Rozier and MLB pitchers; comparison to NFL enforcement.
Guest
Marissa Darden, chair of government investigations and white-collar practice at Benish Law.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOSupreme Court Decision Overview
0:00 to 0:30
Explore the Supreme Court's decision to eliminate caps on party spending.
“When you're running a business, the best days are the ones where priorities stay on track.”
Supreme Court Decision Overview
0:35 to 1:40
Explore the Supreme Court's decision to eliminate caps on party spending.
“The thing about AI for business, it may not automatically fit the way your business works.”
Supreme Court Decision Overview
2:42 to 4:04
Explore the Supreme Court's decision to eliminate caps on party spending.
“That's the real source of the disadvantage, right?”
Majority and Dissenting Opinions
4:04 to 6:06
Discussion of Justice Kavanaugh's majority opinion and Justice Kagan's dissent.
“Andy, let's start with the big question.”
Impact on Political Parties
6:06 to 8:13
Analyze how the ruling affects the financial dynamics of political parties.
“I'm paraphrasing here, but essentially you have to say this specific restriction on speech is closely tailored to accomplishing the goal that we want to accomplish.”
Long-term Consequences of the Ruling
8:13 to 11:25
Discussion on the potential long-term effects of the decision on campaign finance.
“I think a lot of this has to do with the different views that the majority and the dissenters have about corruption.”
Historical Context of Campaign Finance Decisions
11:25 to 14:00
Delve into the evolution of campaign finance regulations over the decades.
“It certainly benefits people who have the ability to write really big checks.”
Campaign Finance and Supreme Court Decisions
14:00 to 22:02
Explore the evolution of campaign finance laws and related Supreme Court cases.
“And the court upheld, though, saying it's entirely proper for these anti-corruption reasons to place limits, dollar limits on how much can be contributed to a campaign and to require disclosure.”
Campaign Finance and Supreme Court Decisions
22:07 to 23:45
Explore the evolution of campaign finance laws and related Supreme Court cases.
“Rokered services by Open to the Public Investing, Inc., member FINRA and SIPC.”
Campaign Finance and Supreme Court Decisions
23:49 to 23:59
Explore the evolution of campaign finance laws and related Supreme Court cases.
“Cards are issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A., member FDIC.”
Show all 21 chapters
Supreme Court Ruling on Transgender Athletes
23:59 to 28:00
Examine the Supreme Court's decision regarding transgender athletes in sports.
“Transgender rights lost again at the Supreme Court.”
Analysis of Supreme Court Rulings on Transgender Rights
28:00 to 32:20
Discusses the implications of recent Supreme Court decisions regarding transgender rights in sports.
“not the truth transgender girls are not biological males even though the court might have used that term throughout.”
The Impact of Legal Cases on Trans Youth
32:20 to 33:56
Explores how ongoing legal cases affect transgender youth and their participation in sports.
“was that there should be more fact finding.”
The Impact of Legal Cases on Trans Youth
34:15 to 35:03
Explores how ongoing legal cases affect transgender youth and their participation in sports.
“Support for the show comes from public.com.”
The Impact of Legal Cases on Trans Youth
35:08 to 36:46
Explores how ongoing legal cases affect transgender youth and their participation in sports.
“Brokered services by Open to the Public Investing, Inc., Member FINRA and SIPC.”
Federal Investigation into Illegal Sports Betting
36:59 to 42:01
Covers the recent federal charges against former NBA players related to illegal sports betting.
“Former NBA players Malik Beasley and Edward Davis, as well as sports agent Paolo Zamorano and three others, have been charged by federal prosecutors in an expanding illegal sports betting probe.”
The Impact of Illegal Gambling in Sports
42:01 to 46:07
Explore the rising issue of illegal gambling in major sports leagues and its implications.
“And those individuals who are named in the indictment and who are known to the grand jury would be likely to testify at trial.”
Challenges in Detecting Gambling Violations
46:07 to 47:45
Discuss the complexities of identifying gambling influences on sports outcomes.
“This is sort of like not your grandma or grandpa's sports betting conspiracy of 30 years ago, where people were much more blatantly obvious about how they would shave points or how they would go about this.”
Future Strategies for the NBA
47:45 to 48:32
Consider potential measures the NBA could implement to address gambling issues.
“The whole industry, I think, is really due for a reckoning.”
Future Strategies for the NBA
49:03 to 49:37
Consider potential measures the NBA could implement to address gambling issues.
Future Strategies for the NBA
49:41 to 50:38
Consider potential measures the NBA could implement to address gambling issues.
“companies need an environment that accelerates strategic growth, and Michigan delivers on that promise.”
Transcript
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1:56Marisa Darden:This is Bloomberg Law with June Grosso from Bloomberg Radio.
2:02Andrew Schapiro:In a 6-3 decision down ideological lines, the Supreme Court on Tuesday threw out long-standing federal limits on spending by political parties saying they violate First Amendment rights. In doing so, the court's conservatives reversed a 25-year-old precedent that upheld the caps as a means of tackling corruption. Writing for the majority, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said the ruling will allow all political parties to participate more freely and compete more fully in the political process and to coordinate more closely with their candidates. That echoed his comments during the oral arguments.
2:43Zane McNeill:That's the real source of the disadvantage, right? You can give huge money to the outside group, but you can't give huge money to the party, and so the parties are very much weakened compared to the outside groups.
2:54Andrew Schapiro:But writing for the dissenters, Justice Elena Kagan warned the decision could bring back quid pro quo corruption by allowing a political party to serve as an alternative checking account for campaign and donors to give as much as half a million dollars to cover a candidate's bills. It's a ruling likely to help Republicans in the November midterms, and just the latest case in a string of cases in which the conservative majority has rolled back campaign finance regulations in the name of the First Amendment, something liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor bemoaned during the oral arguments.
3:33Marisa Darden:You're telling us that Citizens United and McCutcheon ended up, yes, in amplifying the voice of corporations, but diminishing another voice, that of the party. Now you want to now tinker some more and try to raise the voice of one party. Our tinkering causes more harm than it does good.
3:57Andrew Schapiro:My guest is Andrew Shapiro, a partner in Quinn Emanuel's appellate practice group. He was the former U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic. Andy, let's start with the big question. How important is this decision? How much will it change how money is spent in congressional elections?
4:16Marisa Darden:I think it's important for two reasons. So at a general level, it's important because it's the next, maybe almost inevitable step in the evolution of the way the Roberts court looks at campaign finance cases. And so maybe by itself, it's not an earthquake, but as part of a pattern over the last 15 or 20 years, it says a lot. But then even as a practical matter, it is going to allow individuals to give half a million dollars or more to a party. And the party is essentially free to spend it in support of a candidate to pay a candidate's bills. Obviously, that's a much bigger bang for the buck that a donor might get than just$7 ,000, which is currently capped.
5:06Andrew Schapiro:So the majority decision was written by Brett Kavanaugh. Tell us about his argument and whether it mirrors the First Amendment kind of arguments that we seem to see in all these campaign finance cases.
5:18Marisa Darden:So Justice Kavanaugh writing for six members of the court set this up as essentially just an exercise in a balancing test, tried to frame it as a fairly narrow ruling. So you have competing interests here. You have the interest that Congress and in some prior decisions, the Supreme Court had identified of trying to keep not just corruption, but the appearance of corruption over quid pro quo out of our politics. That's on one side of the scale. On the other side of the scale is the First Amendment and the right of individuals or in some of these cases, organizations to use their money to get their views across or support candidates as they wish.
6:01Marisa Darden:And so when you're balancing that, the test that the court has ultimately developed is it has to be closely and narrowly tailored. I'm paraphrasing here, but essentially you have to say this specific restriction on speech is closely tailored to accomplishing the goal that we want to accomplish. And Justice Kavanaugh walked through the stated goals, which are avoiding corruption and avoiding quid pro quos. Maybe one might say quids pro quo. and decided that existing mechanisms are sufficient. So he pointed to the fact that there is still a cap on how much one can give to an individual or to a party.
6:43Marisa Darden:He pointed to prohibitions against what is called earmarking. That is, I can't specifically and expressly give$500 ,000 to the Democratic Party or the Republican Party and say spend it in support of this candidate. that's still forbidden. And so Justice Kavanaugh said, that's a guardrail. And he said that the disclosure laws are a guardrail, right? The campaigns still have to disclose in most instances, the donors and the parties have to do the same thing. And so the idea that having these things out in the sunlight will deter corruption, he felt was sufficient. And therefore, just when doing this balancing test, said those are enough.
7:23Marisa Darden:It's not narrowly tailored. And so we do not need and cannot justify under the First Amendment, having a further restriction saying that parties cannot coordinate their expenditures with individual candidates.
7:36Andrew Schapiro:You mentioned quid pro quo. Writing for the dissenters, the three liberals, Justice Elena Kagan said the ruling opens up the same opportunities for quid pro quo corruption that the limits were meant to check, allowing wealthy donors to dodge individual contribution limits by donating through parties instead. And she did the math sort of about what that means, which you had mentioned before. Explain the concerns that the liberals have about ever expanding Supreme Court decisions, knocking down campaign finance limits. Sure.
8:13Marisa Darden:I think a lot of this has to do with the different views that the majority and the dissenters have about corruption. What does it really mean, a quid pro quo? So the majority is taking a very narrow view. Essentially, they say, well, these laws are meant to prevent quids pro quo and corruption. And by that, we mean somebody very specifically saying, I'm giving$500 ,000 to the party in support of this candidate. And in exchange, I'm expecting that I will get some relief from a government investigation or that subsidies for my industry will be approved, et cetera. And the justices in the minority, Justice Kagan and Justices Sotomayor and Tom G.
9:01Marisa Darden:Brown-Jackson, take a somewhat broader view and say, that's overly technical. And everybody knows what's going on, even if I'm not specifically saying, hey, you know, I'm trying to develop a nuclear power plant here and I need approval. And by the way, I'd like to give$500 ,000 to the party. That's enough. It's enough to do a nudge, nudge, wink, wink. You don't have to have someone expressly saying, I'm happy to give you$500 ,000 if you approve my nuclear power plant. And there's a lot of force to some of the examples that Justice Kagan gives in that dissent. She points out that the parties can essentially be paying the candidates bills.
9:41Marisa Darden:And the functional difference between someone donating to the candidate to pay the candidate's bills or donating to the party to pay the candidate's bills can be hard to discern. So essentially now, even though in name there's a$7 ,000 limit on what an individual can give to a particular candidate, the party can simply say, we're going to take the money that this individual gave us and we'll pay your electricity or your rent, we'll pay for your ads. So she's taking, I think, a more practical view.
10:12Andrew Schapiro:From what I've been reading, in the short term, at least, this is a win for Republicans. President Trump actually said it's a big win for Republicans. Explain why Republicans might benefit more than Democrats.
10:25Marisa Darden:Yeah, that's right. In the short term, I mean, of course, parties and donors and candidates are pretty good at figuring out how to play by whatever the rules are as the rules adapt to adapt their own strategies. But right now, the Republican Party itself has been better at fundraising than the Democratic Party. If you're looking at the national committees, they have greater number of donors who are ready, willing, and able to write the checks in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. And that's why this case was originally brought by Republicans. It's the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
11:00Marisa Darden:It was originally J.D. Vance, when he was a candidate in Ohio, challenged some restrictions against coordinating. That being said, at least on its face, the ruling frees the Democratic Party or some future party, frees that party up to spend as much money as it wants as well in coordination with other candidates. The question for the longer term, though, is whether it benefits one party or not. It certainly benefits people who have the ability to write really big checks. Back in the 1970s, after Watergate when Congress passed the Federal Election Campaign Act. The idea was to try to limit the ability of large donors and large interests to impact government policy just by writing big checks.
11:47Marisa Darden:It's difficult to see how that is not undermined somewhat by this ruling. Maybe it's a correct ruling, correct application of the First Amendment. I'm not stating a position on that. But I think it's hard to deny that this really will amplify the voices of individuals and industries with the deepest pockets.
12:07Andrew Schapiro:Are we going to see more TV ads now, even more political TV ads because of the candidates getting lower rates for TV ads?
12:16Marisa Darden:Well, you know, June, it's hard to imagine seeing more ads than we sometimes see during the political campaign season, but it does seem likely that you will have more money going into television ads now because as you adverted to there, typically a party and PACs and other organizations did not get the same favorable rates that candidates' campaigns did. And now that's essentially out the window because the campaigns can just pay the bills. So we may yet see even more ads, not just on TV, but they're going to be popping up on your computer as well. It's going to be very good for political consultants, I'm sure, and for TV stations.
12:56Marisa Darden:As more money flows in, there are a whole bunch of other folks in the ecosystem who will benefit as well.
13:02Andrew Schapiro:So tell us about this long line of decisions where the Supreme Court has been cutting back on campaign finance regulations. The one that stands out to me is the Citizens United case, which I think during the oral arguments in this case, Justice Alito mentioned that Citizens United was still a much maligned case. And unfairly maligned.
13:30Marisa Darden:Yes.
13:30Andrew Schapiro:Much and unfairly maligned. And no one can forget the video of Justice Alito shaking his head when Barack Obama criticized Citizens United during a State of the Union address. So tell us about this string of cases.
13:46Marisa Darden:There's been an evolution over an even longer period, probably going back about 50 years. So the first case and sort of a landmark case was in the 1970s, and it was called Buckley v. Vallejo. And there the candidate had either a candidate or a donor, it's escaping me right now, had challenged the federal campaign law's contribution limits and disclosure requirements. And the court upheld, though, saying it's entirely proper for these anti-corruption reasons to place limits, dollar limits on how much can be contributed to a campaign and to require disclosure. And it articulated this anti-corruption rationale, and I think in somewhat broader terms than the court today does.
14:35Marisa Darden:And then if you remember, there was a law passed in the early 2000s, sometimes known as McCain-Feingold. Its formal name was the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. And the McCain-Feingold Act said that national party committees couldn't raise or spend funds that mentioned federal candidates within a certain, I think it was 30 days of an election, if they were financed with corporate or union funds. And there was a case in 2003 called McConnell versus the FEC, which largely upheld McCain-Feingold. And it upheld the soft money ban and disclosure rules and had a fairly broad conception, again, of corruption and this possibility of circumventing the donor rules by party and outside groups.
15:20Marisa Darden:Now, there was another decision in 2007, Wisconsin Right to Life, which carved out an exemption that we're probably all familiar with. And it said that corporations or other organizations could still have electioneering communications that are issue ads. So that's why you'll sometimes see these ads that say, call your representative now or call Senator so-and-so and say that you disagree with having people pouring over our border with no restrictions. It's obvious that they're campaigning against Senator so-and-so, but if it's framed as an issue ad, it was permissible under that rule. Citizens United, of course, came next, and that was the real earthquake.
16:02Marisa Darden:Citizens United in 2010, it was a transformative shift. It overruled some parts of the McConnell decision and some prior decisions. And it really narrowed and said that, of course, political speech is protected by the First Amendment, regardless of whether the source is a corporation. And it narrowed campaign finance regulation really to preventing these quid pro quo scenarios or its appearance. And it opened the door to unlimited corporate spending. There's one other recent case that came up a lot in the oral argument here. It's called McCutcheon versus the FEC from 2014. and that struck down aggregate limits on how much any individual could give to all federal candidates.
16:43Marisa Darden:There used to be a rule that said, in addition to a limit on how much I can give to candidate A, I can only give a certain amount to all federal candidates in a particular election cycle. That was struck down. On the same rationale that we already have limits on how much you can give an individual candidate, we have disclosure and that's enough. You can see how each new challenge to the remaining restrictions has resulted in, I think, a more and more narrow view of what type of corruption or quid pro quo these laws are aimed at. And it becomes harder and harder to justify these restrictions against the First Amendment interest that here Justice Kavanaugh talks about in the majority.
17:27Andrew Schapiro:The majority here overruled a 2001 decision. That was the second time in two days that the court overturned a precedent. On Monday, it reversed the 90-year-old Humphreys executor decision. And Justice Kagan, in her dissent, said the majority must overrule Colorado, too, to arrive at its outcome. So once again, disregards and disrespects the core legal principle of stare decisis. So what's your take on the conservative majority and their respect for precedent?
18:02Marisa Darden:There is certainly a pattern, right? So the decision that was overturned here that you're referring to was from the early 2000s called Colorado 2. And traditionally, obviously this was something that was discussed a lot in the Dobbs decision as well, but the standard has been over the years that the court should or can overturn a precedent only in unusual circumstances. And that there has to be a very high bar, something other than just that the court thinks the prior decision was wrong. And here, Justice Kavanaugh, writing for the majority, said, well, subsequent developments in the case law suggest that in this Colorado 2 decision, which had upheld the restrictions that were struck down in this case, Justice Kavanaugh said, well, since that time, the standard that we use for balancing has changed and we apply a closer type of scrutiny to restrictions on the First Amendment.
19:06Marisa Darden:But as Justice Kagan points out, essentially in this decision, they applied the same level of scrutiny. And she calls them out saying that what seems to be happening here, and I think you're right, June, it's happened in some other cases. the court is becoming more comfortable overturning a precedent simply because a majority of justices on the current court think that the prior decision was wrong, rather than that there is some unusual and identifiable need to overturn people's settles expectations.
19:43Andrew Schapiro:Justice Kagan, quoted from a dissent by Justice Stephen Breyer in the McCutcheon case, where he said that the decision eviscerates our nation's campaign finance laws, leaving a remnant. And at the end of her dissent, she said, I'm not sure what to call a remnant of a remnant, but that is what the court has left today. Is this the end, or do you think there'll be more attacks on what's left of campaign finance laws?
20:13Marisa Darden:There still are limits. That was upheld in Buckley versus Philea in the 1970s. So the$7 ,000 limit to an individual candidate and these limits, which the majority in dissent debate, or they debated at least at the oral argument about, is it technically$44 ,000 or is it$500 ,000? It depends how you characterize it. But there still are some limits. So is the next challenge going to say, you know, limits should be out the window as well? Or disclosure? Disclosure is still one of the guardrails against corruption that both the majority and the dissent pointed to here. You can imagine a challenge sometime in the future in which a candidate or a party or an organization says that, too, is not justified by the assertive need to protect the system.
Read the full transcript
21:04Marisa Darden:It'll be interesting to see.
21:06Andrew Schapiro:It's been great having you on. Thanks so much for your insights, Andy. That's Andrew Shapiro, a partner in Quinn Emanuel's Appellate Practice Group.
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23:59Andrew Schapiro:Transgender rights lost again at the Supreme Court. A divided court upheld state laws that banned transgender girls and women from competing for their schools on female athletic teams, siding with conservatives and President Donald Trump on a divisive culture war issue. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the majority, finding that states can separate teams based on biological sex without violating the Constitution or Title IX, a law that bars gender discrimination in schools receiving federal money. Kavanaugh wrote that given the inherent physical differences between the sexes, allowing only biological females to play on women's and girls' teams can reduce the risk of physical injury and ensure fair competition.
24:48Andrew Schapiro:My guest is Zane McNeil, an attorney from Lawyers for Good Government's Gender Justice and Health Equity team. So will you explain how the court decided that they don't violate the Constitution and Title IX?
25:03Zane McNeill:Yeah, let me just do some level setting, I guess, first. So for those who don't know about Title IX, it was a federal law passed in 1972 prohibiting sex discrimination in schools and education programs or receive federal funding. The Biden administration had interpreted it to protect against discrimination of trans folks. And so what the court held was that Title IX allows schools to pretty much say that female sports teams can exclude, may exclude trans women. And that West Virginia had permissively maintained the female sports for what they call biological females, which is sort of like a far right talking point.
25:47Zane McNeill:And so their interpretation of Title IX was that when it was drafted, sex could only mean one thing. And that's what they perceive as this anti-trans term biological sex or sex assigned at birth. For equal protection, you know, we've had a hard time since Scrimetti with it. I mean, the nice thing with the decision is it didn't go as horribly as they possibly could have gone. The court held that West Virginia and Idaho did not violate Equal Protection Clause of the 14th by maintaining these, you know, quote unquote, female sports teams for quote unquote, biological females. They use intermediate scrutiny.
26:28Zane McNeill:So they looked at it as it being sex discrimination or aligning based on sex. And they held, even though it had this sort of heightened scrutiny that the states didn't actually violate that, or they were able to show that it was at least connected to the purpose of it, the specific language here. The equal protection clause allowed schools to maintain separate teams for female and male athletes. Schools could determine eligibility based on the, quote, biological sex constitutionally justified by the what they consider vitally important interests of safety and competitive fairness. And so the sex based classification is justified.
27:07Zane McNeill:States don't need to make case by case exception. So they found that it was substantially related to the important government objective. But that was challenged in one of the concurrences. Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson concurred and dissented in part. Sotomayor was arguing that there could still be fact-finding about whether that was connected enough based on BPJ's specific facts.
27:30Andrew Schapiro:Has it been proven, has it been shown that there are more injuries when there are transgender athletes in female sports?
27:40Zane McNeill:that's what the the states say right 27 states do restrict sports and athletics based on your sex assigned at birth the facts are really up in the air it's not known for sure you know and one of the things we've seen with far right talking points too is that maybe trans girls are trying to cheat their way into women's sports right or take away opportunities from girls and that's not the truth transgender girls are not biological males even though the court might have used that term throughout. And what the concurrence and part dissent in part says is that BBJ specifically, because she was put on puberty blockers, had never gone through, right, what is seen as like male puberty, even if there were certain facts or studies saying that some trans girls have this quote unquote advantage, that wouldn't be the case for BBJ.
28:30Zane McNeill:And so the concurrence and dissent had argued that there needed to be additional facts about whether the state had necessarily fused her an exception to the law.
28:39Andrew Schapiro:How did the majority distinguish Bostock from 2020, which is based on Title VII's ban on sex discrimination in employment, and saying that that protects gay and transgender workers? Was that distinguished from this case?
28:54Zane McNeill:Yeah, so they said that Title VII and Bostock were just not relevant because of the different statutory and factual context. So Title VII, you know, would be employment, but Title IX was on sports. And then, yeah, Bostock was just not connected because the question was different there. I do want to just highlight that, you know, it is concerning, you know, Gorset in his concurrence seems to really want to expand this decision, right? Despite Bostock, you know, the Biden administration had perceived Bostock as being this broad protection that the Trump administration immediately, when they came into office, started to try to undermine, right?
29:35Zane McNeill:And the court, especially in Gorset's concurrence, seems interested in really limiting Bostock to the specific facts of that case and unemployment. And I think that shows that we might have really troubling times ahead.
29:50Andrew Schapiro:Tell us more about that.
29:51Zane McNeill:Yeah. So as we know, the Trump administration, right when he came into office started signing anti-trans executive orders made it the policy the united states you know to keep trans folks from participating in sports that align with their gender identities implemented anti-trans definitions of sex i'm tasked secretary of education to prioritize these title nine enforcement actions against educational institutions were sent in guidance documents on transgender equality inclusive and non-discriminary school environments for lgbtq students supporting transgender youth in sports and we've seen the Department of Education arguing that Title IX is not only permissive of sport bans, but also require them and have been investigating schools who have such gender-affirming policies relating to even bathrooms and locker rooms in addition to sports.
30:32Zane McNeill:There's dozens of these cases that I imagine the Trump administration will take this case and really run with it. We've also seen the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, already signaling that they're going to use this case to file increasing lawsuits against schools with gender-affirming care policies.
30:50Andrew Schapiro:Kavanaugh said that the law can't plausibly be interpreted to refer to anything other than biological sex and not gender identity. Explain why that makes a difference.
31:02Zane McNeill:Specifically around Title IX, right, it protects against sex discrimination. And so what Kavanaugh is saying there, and what every other justice says there, is that cannot be interpreted as including sex discrimination broadly, right? So including discrimination on gender identity, or like transgender status. And therefore that West Virginia is not in violation of Title IX by having this ban that affects PBJ because it's specific to sex assigned at birth, you know, this decision and the Trump administration, they're really using terms that have been employed to go after and increase discrimination against trans people.
31:44What parts of the opinion did the liberals dissent from and what parts did they concur in?
31:52Zane McNeill:They concurred in Title IX. So they agreed with the majority that Title IX is not a violation for the states to have these sports bans. Again, it's may not have to. So states may create these sports bans, but it's not mandated under Title IX. It's not in violation of Title IX. The difference was around equal protection. The majority were mandated down to the courts, you know, for the proceeding system of the opinion. But the question that the liberals had was that there should be more fact finding. You know, like I said before, BPJ is a specific case. She did not go through what is seen as like male puberty, you know, and she didn't get to have those facts and those considerations.
32:40Zane McNeill:And, you know, the liberals said that the court's equal protection precedents the majority neither require nor support what they considered contorted logic and really said that there was a outstanding factual dispute that should have prevented the court's resolution of her claim.
32:54Andrew Schapiro:One of the plaintiffs here wanted to drop the case. She was no longer participating in sports, and she was approaching graduation. That was in the Idaho case. And I'm wondering why the Supreme Court didn't allow her to drop out.
33:11Zane McNeill:So when Hecox had brought the equal protection claim, BPJ is the one who brought the Title IX claim. And so, you know, in my opinion, it's it seems really harmful, right, that they didn't let her drop the case, right, because she was facing such amounts of harassment and discrimination. you know, having your name on these cases really increased rates of discrimination. I'm very proud, you know, of BPJ and Hecox for fighting for themselves and fighting for trans youth because they just wanted to, you know, play on sports teams. They wanted to be there with their friends and they fought for themselves in their community.
33:48Zane McNeill:I don't know why the court didn't let Hecox drop the case. I think they had are said that there was already so much in here, so much fact finding, you know, there's so much briefing on it. So why not? But from the actual claims brought, I don't see how they could be different, like if it was just BPJ.
34:05Andrew Schapiro:Well, thanks so much for joining me today. That's Zane McNeil, an attorney for Lawyers for Good Government's Gender Justice and Health Equity team.
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37:01Andrew Schapiro:Former NBA players Malik Beasley and Edward Davis, as well as sports agent Paolo Zamorano and three others, have been charged by federal prosecutors in an expanding illegal sports betting probe. According to the unsealed indictment, Beasley agreed with his former teammate Davis to underperform or overperform in games, leading insiders to make bets on how many points or rebounds he would collect in a game. His attorney said, we look forward to vigorously defending Malik against any of these charges. The case is the latest to emerge from a long-running federal investigation into the sports industry that's already led to charges against NBA player Terry Rozier and two MLB pitchers on the Cleveland Guardians.
37:48Andrew Schapiro:My guest is Marissa Darden, chair of the government investigations and white-collar practice at Benish Law. Marissa, tell us about the charges here.
37:56Zane McNeill:So two days ago, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York unsealed an indictment charging another six individuals with a conspiracy to commit money laundering, honest services fraud, and violating anti-punny statutes. And this seems like this investigation had been going on for over a year. At least one of the defendants in the case knew about it. That was Malik Beasley, one of the former NBA players. And it had been publicly reported over a year ago that he was under investigation for gambling, illegal gambling. And this is another indictment coming from the same U.S. attorney's office that previously had indicted some other NBA players late last year for a similar crime.
38:41Zane McNeill:So it seems like this is something that they've been looking into for a while.
38:43Andrew Schapiro:Explain exactly what they're accused of, you know, the tweaking their performance on these so-called prop bets.
38:51Zane McNeill:So two of the defendants in this six defendant conspiracy are former NBA players. One is an agent, one of the agents of the former NBA players. That's Malik Beasley and Edward Davis. And the other individuals would have been sort of friends, hangers-on, parts of their entourage that were assisting in creating these prop bets. And there were several games that the U.S. Attorney's Office actually lists right in the conspiracy as part of the online gambling wagering scheme where the players were actually making decisions early on and discussing with each other that they were going to either shave points or score less rebounds or do any kind of manipulation for purposes of hitting side parlay bets in certain games, which includes a 2024 Milwaukee Bucks-Cleveland Cavaliers game, a Charlotte Hornets game against the Bucks.
39:48Zane McNeill:And this was when, again, Beasley and Davis were both playing in the NBA. So I can imagine that the NBA is very concerned about these allegations and has publicly stated that they're cooperating in the government's investigation.
40:03Andrew Schapiro:How much did Beasley make in this alleged scheme? because he made about$60 million during his NBA career.
40:12Zane McNeill:They don't give a total amount in the conspiracy, but you can imagine it's in the hundreds of thousands of dollars or more. I mean, as you noted, both these individuals were making millions of dollars, although it's been publicly reported that Beasley and Davis were in financial trouble, particularly after they left the league. And I think it was Mr. Beasley who was in the midst of securing a$42 million multi-year contract, with the Detroit Pistons when the news of this investigation in the summer of 2025 came out. So the money, the actual total amount is really less of an issue here, June, mostly because the statutes don't require a threshold dollar amount in order to violate the law.
40:56Andrew Schapiro:I think it was in October of last year, there were the arrests of Terry Rozier and Chauncey Billups. Is it the same investigation that's ongoing or does it look like a different investigation?
41:09Zane McNeill:Again, the U.S. Attorney's Office doesn't say. And so we really don't know whether this all stems from the same investigation or is part of something different. But you can expect that this is something that the NBA and the U.S. Attorney's Office has been looking at for a long time. and if they believe that there are more than one or more than just a handful of players, the FBI would have established a task force or some other, you know, sort of designated team of investigators to look into these allegations and to try to figure out whether this is a systemic problem.
41:47Andrew Schapiro:In the other indictment, the three defendants in the similar gambling case, an assistant coach, Damon Jones, has pleaded guilty. So he'll be testifying. And I guess that's where a lot of the information will come at trial. Do we know if he's involved in this case as well?
42:03Zane McNeill:Not currently, although the indictment does list several unindicted co-conspirators in this case that are just named as sort of co-conspirator one or co-conspirator two, some of whom were residents of Arizona and Brooklyn. And there may be some overlap there. And those individuals who are named in the indictment and who are known to the grand jury would be likely to testify at trial.
42:25Andrew Schapiro:And also there are similar indictments against MLB players?
42:31Zane McNeill:Yes, there's a pending case of former Cleveland Guardians players in my hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, that is pending in the Southern District of New York for similar allegations. And fans of the MLB may also know that famous L.A. Dodger Shani Otani, his translator and confidant has been accused of illegal gambling. So it's become pretty rampant since 2018, 2019, when sports gambling was made legal and a lot of these online prop bet companies have come up. It's getting harder and harder for the major sports leagues to clamp down on this. I think the NFL has probably done the best at it, but NBA and MLB certainly have had their public share of issue.
43:20Andrew Schapiro:According to, let's see, the American Gaming Association, the American sports betting industry wagered nearly$150 billion on sports in 2024, up more than 23 % from a year earlier. Those numbers are astonishing. What has the NFL done that the NBA and the MLB haven't done? I think it's a couple of things.
43:47Zane McNeill:Number one, the NFL ownership structure and group is very heavy-handed, and the players understand that they have to abide by the rules. Their player association is not as strong as the MLB or the NBA by any stretch of the imagination. The owners have a ton of control. And so as a general rule, I think when edicts are made by the NFL, by Roger Goodell and the ownership, they are followed because there just aren't a lot of other options, right? If you play football, the odds of you getting into the NFL are so low, the numbers are really against your favor. And so people follow the rules. The second thing is, I think it's been a lot harder to create side and parlay bets, side bets, rather than just on major games.
44:35Zane McNeill:So it's easier in the NBA or the MLB to break down statistics in very easy ways that players can control, as opposed to the NFL, where there's a whole lot of other factors involved that make it a lot harder to create parlay bets. Third, I think most importantly, is the culture of sports betting has been more embedded, you know, from a fan perspective, I think, in the NBA than either of the other professional sports. I can't speak to hockey, but certainly in the NFL and in MLB. You go to any sports stadium right now that has NBA games that play in it. There are several locations where there are betting facilities on the premises.
45:18Zane McNeill:And so there's been a real integration of sports betting into the fandom in a way, particularly in basketball, that there hasn't been in some of the other sports. And I think you're seeing the consequence of that.
45:30Andrew Schapiro:I mean, the things that they're accused of don't affect the final score, do they? So does that make it harder to find the violation, the gambling? I don't think we can say that.
45:40Zane McNeill:I mean, if you have individuals who are accused of, you know, not getting as many rebounds as they would normally go after or, you know, faking an injury like in the in the Chauncey Billups indictment, there was one player who, you know, went out in the second quarter of a game as part of his side bet, you know, sort of conspiracy. And so I think there is a bottom line effect on the outcome of the game. But to your point, June, the breakdown of each individual statistic or each individual player's responsibility or role makes it harder to, you know, look at this sort of plainly and say they shaved points.
46:21Zane McNeill:This is sort of like not your grandma or grandpa's sports betting conspiracy of 30 years ago, where people were much more blatantly obvious about how they would shave points or how they would go about this. So it's much harder to detect. And that's part of the reason why the NBA, I think, hasn't rooted it out from the beginning without government intervention is because they just don't have a way of seeing what individual players are discussing outside of the locker room.
46:46Andrew Schapiro:The NBA has said that they're cooperating with the government. Do you know if they're doing anything else on their own to try to stem this?
46:56Zane McNeill:I don't have any specific knowledge of the NBA doing anything. My assumption, based on my experience, is that the NBA would have hired a AMLA 50 top-tier law firm or an individual who's used to doing high-stakes internal investigations, such as Loretta Lynch at Paul Weiss or Mary Jo White at Debovoise and Plimpton or other respectable individuals at the highest level of investigations to come in and help do some internal reviews of players' cell phones, player communications, staffing, create interview opportunities to talk to key personnel, and then make recommendations for how the NBA can do a better job of ameliorating these problems up front.
47:45Zane McNeill:Any final thoughts here? The whole industry, I think, is really due for a reckoning. And I'm just, as a bystander, as a fan, as a lawyer, I'm very interested to see how the leagues continue to respond, either publicly or privately. You know, one of the things that is a common denominator in all white-collar criminal defense cases is if they take the phone, you know that there's a problem. And in these cases, they're often made by the text messages between, you know, co-conspirators. And so you have to wonder, like, is the NBA going to start giving out phones? Are there going to be different cell phone usage policies?
48:21Zane McNeill:What can they negotiate with the players associations about the type of communications that are going to be monitored? Are you going to have to turn over your phone as an employee of the NBA or as an employee of a franchise? That type of information, I think, is what will be interesting to see as we move forward.
48:36Andrew Schapiro:Oh, those text messages. Thanks so much, Marissa. That's Marissa Darden of Benesh Law. And that's it for this edition of the Bloomberg Law Show. Remember, you can always get the latest legal news on our Bloomberg Law podcast. You can find them on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and at www.bloomberg.com slash podcast slash law. And remember to tune into the Bloomberg Law Show every weeknight at 10 p.m. Wall Street time. I'm June Grosso, and you're listening to Bloomberg.
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From the publisher
Andrew Schapiro, a partner in the appellate law practice at Quinn Emanuel and the former US Ambassador to the Czech Republic, discusses the Supreme Court doing away with political party spending caps. Zane McNeill, an attorney in Lawyers for Good Government’s gender justice and health equity practice, discusses the Supreme Court upholding state laws that ban transgender women and girls from playing on female sports teams. Marisa Darden, chair of the white collar and government investigations practice group at Benesch Law, discusses the indictment of two former NBA players in the sports gambling probe. June Grasso hosts.
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