The Supreme Court has allowed a Native American tribe in Florida to offer online sports betting on mobile devices across the state.
A 2018 Supreme Court ruling freed up sports betting in the United States by striking down a federal law that effectively banned such bets in most states.
According to the NY Times, this 2018 measure made an exception for “the conduct of casino gambling on tribal lands” when passed under federal law.
The state entered into a compact with the Seminole Tribe of Florida in 2021. Saying that anyone present in Florida could place mobile bets at their casinos. But, the servers who manage the transactions must be on tribal lands.
Such bets, the 2021 pact said, “shall be deemed to be placed solely where they are received.”
Casinos tried to sue the government
Traditional casinos sued the government, saying it should have blocked the deal. Judge Dabney L. Friedrich of the Federal District Court in Washington agreed, calling the pact’s key phrase “fiction.”
“When a federal law authorizes an activity only in specific locations,” she wrote. “The parties cannot escape this limitation by ‘considering’ that their activity occurs where, as a matter of fact, it does not occur.”
A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed Judge Friedrich’s decision. The panel said the central issues in the case “should be left for Florida courts to decide.”
In their emergency request asking the justices to intervene, Magic City Casino in Miami and Bonita Springs Poker Room said the 2021 pact violated federal law and the Constitution’s equal protection clause.
The compact, lawyers for the casinos wrote, “gives an Indian tribe a state monopoly on online sports gambling and, at the same time, makes such conduct a crime if engaged in by anyone of a different race, ancestry, ethnicity, or national origin.” .
Decision allows sports betting in tribe casinos
Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh issued a statement in the gambling case on Wednesday.
“To the extent that a separate Florida statute (other than the compact) authorizes the Seminole Tribe – and only the Seminole Tribe – to conduct certain off-reservation gaming operations in Florida, state law raises serious equal protection concerns,” he wrote. he.
“But the constitutionality of state law is not directly presented in this application.”
Judge Kavanaugh added: “In any event, the Florida Supreme Court is currently considering questions of state law relating to the tribe’s potential off-reservation gaming operations.”
Elizabeth B. Prelogar, the U.S. attorney general, wrote in response. “The compact in this case is an agreement between two sovereigns – the State of Florida and the Seminole Tribe – concerning the tribe’s own conduct in commercial gaming operations within the state.”
“This agreement between sovereigns does not implicate race-based equal protection concerns,” she wrote. “A sovereign government has no race.”
“If the Florida Supreme Court concludes that the Florida Legislature’s authorization for gambling outside Indian lands is not permitted under the Florida Constitution, it would provide plaintiffs with the relief they seek,” she wrote.
“This pending case provides the appropriate forum to resolve plaintiffs’ claims within the meaning of state law,” he concluded.
