Supreme Court Gives Seminole Sports Betting Go-Ahead In FloridaRetail Sportsbooks Opening, Challenges Remain For Online Wagering |
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Florida bettors can soon bet on sports but will have to head to Seminole casinos to make those wagers. After a recent Supreme Court ruling, the tribe can proceed with taking bets, but so far has only announced plans to launch retail sports betting in December.
“The Seminole Tribe thanks the State of Florida, the U.S. Department of the Interior, and the U.S. Department of Justice for defending our compact,” Seminole Chairman Marcellus Osceola Jr. said. “By working together, the tribe, the state, and the federal government achieved a historic legal victory.”
There hasn’t been an announcement regarding online wagering, which has been a source of contention in legal wrangling regarding the issue. Despite the ruling, additional hurdles remain at the state level as well.
Challenges Continue
Along with launching sportsbooks, the Seminoles plan to move forward with craps and roulette, which are also allowed under the updated compact with the state. But a mobile sports betting launch has been the issue and plaintiffs Magic City Casino and the Bonita Springs Poker Room argue that the deal violates state and federal laws.
That includes the Constitution’s equal protection clause by granting “an Indian tribe a statewide monopoly to conduct online sports gaming while simultaneously making such conduct a felony if done by anyone of a different race, ancestry, ethnicity or national origin.”
Justice Brett Kavanaugh expressed some agreement with that argument, but noted that the state court may be a better place for the issue to be decided. Magic City and Bonita Springs have asked the Florida Supreme Court to scrap the deal because voters approved an initiative in 2018 to ban further gaming expansion.
However, the initiative included an exception for “the conduct of casino gambling on tribal lands.” The compact tried to argue that bets could be made online statewide, as long as servers processing those bets were based on tribal lands.
Online Betting Could Be Paused Before Court Acts
Even if the Seminoles relaunch online betting, gaming attorney Daniel Wallach argues betting might be put on hold by the court until a decision is reached.
“The Florida Supreme Court has an ‘all writs’ power under the state constitution to issue a stay or an injunction to preserve the status quo of a proceeding that is pending before the court on other jurisdictional basis,” he noted on Twitter.
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