Atlantic City casino workers continue push for indoor smoking ban; state argues it could lose $500M+ in taxes

On Monday, a group of Atlantic City casino workers asked Superior Court Judge Patrick Bartels to ban smoking in gambling halls, citing the toxic effects of working in a "poisonous" atmosphere. At the same time, the state said ending smoking could jeopardize a half-billion-dollar pot of money for senior citizens and the disabled. Bartels did not issue a ruling, but said he aims to do so "as quickly as possible."

According to the state and gambling interests, a ruling banning smoking in the nine casinos could provoke serious damage to the city's gaming industry, whose core business, money earned from in-person gamblers, has yet to recover to the level it was before the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020.

However, supporters of the measure say it could be an equally impactful change for workers who say they are sick of having to breathe other people’s smoke to make a living, and who cite illnesses they attribute to secondhand smoke, including bronchitis, asthma, and other respiratory ailments, including several cases of cancer.

This issue has been one of the gambling industry's most controversial ones, not only in Atlantic City but also in other states where workers have expressed concern about secondhand smoke. Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Kansas, and Virginia casino workers are waging similar campaigns.

Presently, smoking is permitted on 25% of the casino floor, albeit in non-contiguous areas, leading to the presence of second-hand smoke throughout varying degrees of the gaming environment.

Last month, the United Auto Workers (UAW), which represents workers at the Bally’s, Caesars, and Tropicana casinos, and a group of casino workers opposed to smoking in Atlantic City gambling halls, filed a lawsuit in state Superior Court to overturn a law that leaves casino employees as the only ones not covered by the protections of a Clean Workplace Air Act. 

"The purpose of the act is to protect workers from sickness and death," said Nancy Erika Smith, the attorney who brought the lawsuit. "It is not to put money in the casinos' pockets. We are seeking to end a special law which does a favor for casinos and seriously harms workers." She also raised the issues of equal protection under the law, and what she called a Constitutional right to safety.

But Deputy Attorney General Robert McGuire, representing Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy and the state's acting health commissioner, said there is no such constitutional right. Murphy has said he will sign a smoking ban into law but has recently expressed concern about the casinos’ economic arguments. 

Citizens have the freedom to pursue safety and happiness, but nowhere does the government guarantee those things to them as a right, McGuire said in his arguments against the lawsuit.

McGuire also repeatedly cited the state's Casino Revenue Fund, into which 8% of the casinos’ revenue is paid to fund programs for senior citizens and the disabled. In fiscal year 2024, he said, $526 million from the fund will be spent on such programs. The implication was that this money would be at risk if smoking is banned and the casinos do less business as smokers take their money elsewhere. 

Smoking opponents dispute that the casinos would lose business, citing a report that shows casinos that ended smoking did better financially without it. Smith said the argument that "people should be poisoned" so that casinos can do well and generate more state tax revenue is "repugnant" and "shocking."

Seth Ptasiewicz, an attorney for casino workers who want to keep the current smoking policy, said steep economic declines have followed the imposition of smoking bans in several places, including Atlantic City, which tried it in 2008, only to quickly reverse course after a 19.8% decline in casino revenue in two weeks. These workers "understand that (smoking) is a part of the job, and they accept it," he said, adding, "no job is 100% safe."

One of his clients, Local 54 of the Unite Here union, said in court papers it fears as much as a third of its 10,000 members could lose their jobs if smoking is banned.

Attorney Christopher Porrino, representing the Casino Association of New Jersey, said the state Legislature has had nearly a half-century to change Atlantic City’s smoking policy and has opted not to. "In a few weeks it will be 46 years since the first casino opened in Atlantic City," he said. "From that day forward and every day since, patrons of casinos have continuously smoked."

The anti-smoking workers are in the fourth year of a campaign to end smoking in Atlantic City’s casinos that previously relied on political efforts to get lawmakers to change the law. However, those efforts have yet to bear fruit.

Shortly after a bill that would end smoking advanced out of a state Senate committee, other lawmakers introduced a competing bill that would continue to allow smoking on 25% of the casino floor but would reconfigure where it is allowed. No employee would be forced to work in a smoking area against their will under the bill. Neither measure has been acted on in months.