New Jersey and union ask judge to dismiss anti
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — Atlantic City’s main casino workers union and the New Jersey attorney general on Monday asked a judge to dismiss a lawsuit brought by a different union that seeks to ban smoking at the city’s nine casinos.
Local 54 of the Unite Here union said in a filing in state Superior Court that a third of the 10,000 workers it represents would be at risk of losing their jobs and the means to support their families if smoking were banned.
Currently, smoking is allowed on 25% of the casino floor. But those areas are not contiguous, and the practical effect is that secondhand smoke is present in varying degrees throughout the casino floor.
A lawsuit brought earlier this month by the United Auto Workers, which represents dealers at the Bally’s, Caesars and Tropicana casinos, seeks to overturn New Jersey’s indoor smoking law, which bans it in virtually every workplace except casinos.