Atlantic City casinos are slowly crawling back to life after their long pandemic lockdown, although one operator could lose some of its momentum following a recent court ruling.

On Monday, New Jersey gambling regulators revealed that the nine Atlantic City casinos generated combined slots-and-table-games revenue of $199m in August, a 30.5% decline from August 2019 but nearly $52m better than July 2020.

August’s slots revenue was down 30.8% year-on-year to $144.1m while table games slipped 29.8% to $54.9m. However, both figures represented significant improvements from July’s slots ($111.8m) and table ($35.6m) totals. For the first eight months of 2020, revenue is down 53.9% to $842.2m.

AC casinos were cleared to reopen on July 2 after nearly four months of inactivity due to COVID-19. But they’ve been limited to 25% capacity and, while the state’s governor announced last month that guests could once again smoke on the gaming floors, he rescinded that order just days later, leaving smokers fuming over this défense de fumer edict.