The five national sports organizations, including the NFL, that are suing New Jersey to prevent the legalization of Las Vegas-style sports betting told a federal appeals court on Tuesday that there is no need for the entire court to take up the issue.

"Defendants ask this Court to resolve a conflict that does not exist, in hopes of reopening a constitutional question that they already lost," Paul Clement, a former U.S. solicitor general who is representing the leagues, wrote in a 20-page brief.

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in August upheld an earlier decision blocking New Jersey's latest bid to allow sports wagering at the state's struggling casinos and horse tracks. The state responded by petitioning the appeals court for a so-called "en banc" review of the case by all 23 of its active judges.

Supporters of legal sports betting were heartened by the court's rare directive earlier this month for the leagues to respond to the state's request for a full hearing, because appeals courts rarely seek more information before either agreeing or declining to grant an en-banc review. The 3rd Circuit accepted only one such review case in 2014, and has agreed to hear only three so far in 2015, said Daniel Wallach, a Florida sports law attorney, who added that appeals courts seldom even seek a response from the plaintiffs before deciding whether to take up a case.

Clement wrote that the state is wrong in its interpretation of last month's ruling that it is now unconstitutionally locked into either maintaining all of its existing sports laws or repealing all of them entirely.

Instead, Clement wrote, the second ruling "simply makes the commonsense points that not every law styled as a 'repeal' is a genuine repeal." The leagues contended — and the court agreed — that the revised state sports betting law that left an option for state racetracks and casinos to run their own sports betting operations, "while artfully couched," still amounted to an illegal authorization of sports betting by the state.

One of the more unusual aspects of the four-year-old case is that the same judge — Julio Fuentes — who wrote the majority opinion in 2013 in a 2-1 decision that favored the leagues also wrote the dissenting opinion in a 2-1 ruling last month in a decision that also supported the position of the leagues.

The leagues also sought to persuade the court this week that the issue is not significant enough to be worthy of full review by a circuit court.

This is a reprint from northjersey.com. to view the original, click here.