More than 6,000 Atlantic City casino employees have petitioned the New Jersey Supreme Court to eliminate the industry’s exemption from the state’s Smoke Free Air Act. Their argument? Recent revenue figures basically blow apart the longstanding claim that workplace smoking bans would trigger financial collapse.

The appeal follows an appellate court decision ordering additional proceedings to assess the casino sector’s economic projections regarding a potential indoor smoking prohibition. Casino workers, organised under the group CEASE (Casino Employees Against Smoking’s Effects), maintain that the industry’s current financial strength directly contradicts warnings of revenue loss and mass redundancies should smoking restrictions be extended to gaming floors.

Top-Tier Revenue Performance Shifts the Debate

The timing of the legal challenge coincides with Atlantic City’s strongest financial performance in years.

American Gaming Association data places three local properties among the highest-grossing casinos in the United States: Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa, Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Atlantic City, and Ocean Casino Resort. Borgata surpassed Encore Boston Harbor last year to claim the third position nationally by revenue.

Attorney Nancy Erika Smith, representing the casino employees, framed the matter as a fundamental workplace protection issue. “Petitioners are over six thousand workers in Atlantic City casinos who are poisoned every day at work by secondhand smoke because they are excluded from the Smoke Free Air Act, which protects all other workers,” she wrote in the filing.

Economic Arguments Under Scrutiny

New Jersey’s indoor air quality legislation explicitly exempts casinos from smoking restrictions applied to virtually all other commercial workplaces. The appellate court’s directive for further proceedings specifically targets the competing economic analyses submitted by both sides, which tell very different stories.

Casino operators have relied on research from Spectrum Gaming Group projecting substantial revenue declines and job losses if indoor smoking were eliminated. Workers cite a contrasting study by the Las Vegas-based Gaming Casino Consultants Consortium, which concludes that smoking bans no longer produce significant revenue drops for casino properties. Depending on how you look at it, both can’t be right.

Pete Naccarelli, a longtime Borgata dealer and CEASE co-founder, argued that current performance figures invalidate the industry’s position. “These record-breaking numbers show that the industry’s claim that smoke-free workplaces would cause grave economic damage simply doesn’t hold up,” he said. “Casinos may be raking in record profits, but the workers powering those profits are still breathing in toxic secondhand smoke every shift.”

The case represents a real test of how regulatory exemptions granted during periods of economic uncertainty hold up when market conditions improve substantially. The New Jersey Supreme Court will now determine whether to hear the workers’ appeal or allow lower court proceedings to continue.