Quote:
Originally Posted by LetsGambool
Im just trying to understand how Stars could decide they were OK violating state law for four years, then one day decide they weren't. Its not like the law was stayed pending the Supreme Court ruling.
When you hire a lawyer to advise you about compliance (i.e., not litigation, but trying to stay within the law so as to avoid having to litigate later), and the law is vague, the lawyer will often give you some variant on the following advice.
"We recommend that for maximum protection of the company, you need to do X [some extremely restrictive course of action that the management of the company doesn't want to do]. If you do not do X, the consequences may be severe if the courts rule against you:[list of dire consequences]. If you choose not to do X, your interests will be best protected by doing Y [slightly less restrictive course of action]. Doing Y will not fully protect you from [dire consequences]. However, if you do Y, you can at least contend that [some argument that might persuade a court to mitigate the dire consequences]. You could choose to do Z. However...." and on and on it goes. You get the idea.
Stars didn't decide to "violate" state law. They decided that they wanted to continue doing business in the US despite UIGEA (unlike some companies). Thus, they decided to take a risk (probably not a huge one, but some risk) that they might later on be ruled to have done something illegal. They also decided to take a risk that they might be frowned upon in a future licensing process.
However, they decided that it was important to draw lines so as to mitigate the risk. And one of the lines they drew is that while they would be willing to do business in a state with an online poker ban if the ban were being challenged in court, they would not be willing to take the risk of doing business in a state where a poker ban had been upheld. And you can see what risks were being mitigated here-- basically, once the ban has been upheld, if you continue doing business, you are opening yourself up to charges that you knowingly and deliberately violated the law, rather than operating while you maintained a good faith belief that the law was not applicable.
This is simply a lot different from "they were violating the law before, and they still are now". They decided to draw a line based on whether a state law had been upheld by the courts. It's the same distinction you or I might draw with respect to a ban on PLAYING poker-- you might decide that it is worth waiting out if someone was challenging the constitutionality of the ban, but if the ban were upheld, you might decide to stop playing rather than risk prosecution and being charged with knowingly violating the law.