US Supreme Court Asked to Torpedo Seminoles Sports Betting Deal

Two Sunshine State cardrooms hold petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to nullify the $2.5 one thousand million gaming pack between the res publica and the Seminole Tribe. The sell handed the latter a monopoly on statewide nomadic sports betting. Should SCOTUS have the case, its determination could shape the future of online sports betting inward the U.S.

The operators, Occident Flagler Associates, and Bonita-Fort Myers Corp., fight the 2021 compact car violates the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA), which prohibits off-reservation tribal gaming.

The State of Florida has taken a spacious indication of this statute. It argues that all mobile betting transactions come on Seminole dry land because that’s where the Tribe’s cyberspace servers are based.

DOI ‘Got It Wrong’

U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, whose Bureau of Red Indian Affairs must okay or deny commonwealth gaming compacts, allowed the business deal to be approved under the provisions of IGRA inwards Aug 2021 – wrongly, according to the plaintiffs.

Lawyers for the card clubs wrote inward their petition that on that point was aught inward federal law of nature “that provides for gaming cancelled Indian lands,” which the heavyset “clearly” did.

Instead, they claim, the peak of the powder compact was to “provide a snitch for dodging Florida’s constitutional requirement of a pop referendum to approve off-reservation sports betting.”

Since voters approved that constitutional amendment inwards 2018, matters of gambling casino gaming expansion must follow assign to a public referendum for approval, which the compact wasn’t. That amendment was, ironically, backed past the Seminoles at the time.

Florida argues that sports betting isn’t a cassino game, or at least, that the listing of the “casino games” useable inward the body politic was “fixed” at the clip and didn’t include sports betting.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs indicate this line of reasoning allows FL to “have its bar and eat it, too.”

They require SCOTUS to go over a federal appellant court’s decision upholding the stocky after it was initially declared null and void inward the take down court.

Potential Repercussions

If the Supreme Margaret Court doesn’t submit the case, it could feature immense ramifications for online sports betting in other states where tribal wandering monopolies may live a viable option. These include California, where a future tense statewide wandering market place would apace get i of the biggest inwards the world.

This enquiry is exceptionally of import non just now for the people of Florida, but for the nationwide case in point it testament countersink for other state-tribal compacts if the Court of Appeals’ optimistic reply is left hand undisturbed — as an end-run non simply around state-law prohibitions on gaming sour tribal lands, but also around Congress’ limitation of IGRA’s federal imprimatur to gambling on tribal lands,” lawyers for the plaintiffs wrote.

In October 2023, SCOTUS declined to give the plaintiffs’ bespeak for a long-term remain on the appellate courtyard ruling, leaving the Seminoles unloose to relaunch their sports betting app, which the Tribe did in November 2023.

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