NCSL Firmly Against US Anti-Gambling Legislation

April 5, 2014 by

us-anti-gambling-legislationThe history of online gambling in the United States is full of complicated legal struggles. The line between the rights of states and the rights of the federal government has been a main factor in making these struggles so interesting. Some new US anti-gambling legislation has come up that is the most recent battle in this war, and plenty of groups representing the rights of the states have spoke out against it. They see it as infringing on the rights of the states to decide the issue of online gambling for themselves, and this comes after a few states have already regulated and begun operating online gambling services.

US Anti-Gambling Legislation Prompts NCSL Reply

The NCSL is the National Conference of State Legislatures. While the nation as a whole has Congress, each individual state has their own legislature. In a letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senate Minority Leader John Boehner, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and others, the NCSL stated how they were strongly against this new legislation because of how it takes away the rights for states to choose how to handle online gambling inside of their own borders.

The Nature of the Legislation

The legislation in question is a recent proposal to completely ban all forms of Internet gambling inside of the United States. It’s being framed as a change to the Wire Act of 1961, a law that was put in place to make it illegal to conduct sports betting over the phone. The Department of Justice tried to use this law to say that online gambling of all forms was illegal before, but Attorney General Eric Holder stated in 2011 that the Wire Act of 1961 did not apply to anything other than sports betting, something that a majority of the Internet gambling community already thought to be true.

Whether this legislation passes or not will be extremely interesting, and it could spell disaster for the industry as a whole if it was to pass. Until then, we’ll just have to wait and see how this all plays out.

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