You might try speaking to a gaming lawyer who isn't on the industry payroll, Professor Nelson Rose for one spoke up with concern about the Barton bill possibly being a Trojan gift horse.

The precedent established under Garcia and reaffirmed in Reno v Condon is that the restriction/preemption on commerce must apply to everyone in order to apply to States, and in those cases the restriction did apply to everyone so a rational basis was sufficient.

SCOTUS has yet to review a case in which Congress attempted to use a rational only basis to prevent States from entering into an area of commerce while in the next breath entering into that area itself.

A good argument for what Barton does is likely the one the authors attempted to make, that Congress isn't actually entering into the commerce of online gambling, by asserting that poker doesn't fit the traditional definition of gambling.

That at least gets them back into the realm of rational basis, but the mistake in Barton was isolating poker while restricting States from offering even less historically problematic games such as bingo or more predominantly skill based-contests such as bridge, doing that doesn't even pass the smell let alone rational basis test.

If I was assigned the task of writing the statute, I would not ban States from offering 'games with drawing more than once daily', I would preempt States from putting Class III gaming online (allowing them to do as they please with bingo and bridge etc.) and base my argument for federal regulation of online poker on it's wide spread popularity and potential for consumers to be defrauded, etc.

Under that construction, the States would not be preempted from authorizing commerce which the fed government would itself be authorizing, both States and the Federal government would be able to authorize online Class II gaming, with the preemption on poker regulation rationally related to consumer protection.

I do believe it's possible to write a statute which accomplishes much of what Reid/Barton would like to do without us getting bitten in the ass by poker being severed, but it wouldn't be easy and neither of their previous attempts at writing one succeeded IMHO.

In this case, both the Barton bill and leaked Reid bills attempted to put State governments on a lower footing under the law then they allowed themselves to be placed on - preempting States from authorizing online gaming while authorizing it themselves.

Congress can do that, they did it in the case of atomic energy e.g., but my guess is that the courts may rule that fewer lives could be lost to playing online poker than a nuclear meltdown.

I should have been more clear, I agree the Barton bill is better, but I'd even be happy with the Reid bill. Good points, and I agree their motivations are frustrating and not conducive to the best interests of poker, but yeah, as you mentioned, any time the government's motivations appeared to be in the best interest of poker were probably just a coincidence. Personally, I can be frustrated with the politics of it but still be happy that some politicians are continuing to take their (long) shots at passing something which would lead to broader licensing of poker.

A year ago, posting this thread would result in 'omg one time'. Now it's all meh. Don't really care.

which explains why the article was on the wire for almost 4 hours when I saw it, and nobody had posted about it yet.

Shifting political winds. Gotta love 'em.

Well, the District Court that enjoined New Jersey's sports betting rejected that argument. NJ will appeal all the way to the Supremes if needed, according to Gov. Christie.

Even the Federation gambles, when necessary to satisfy some contrived plot device.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Royale

Judge Shipp within his own ruling tacitly admitted that PASPA on it's own unconstitutionally prohibits States from the commerce of sports betting by not also extending that prohibition throughout the Federation .

He did a Chief Justice Roberts impersonation however, by interpreting the statute as 'plugging a hole' in Title 18 - under which everyone other than States are prohibited from the commerce of sports betting through State law predicated enforcement statutes.

This is nothing more than attempt by Caesars to exclude PS From the US market.

>.< no bueno, need PS in the US!

Read more: http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2013...#ixzz2N8WeCFUf

This is startling, they literally, publicly admit that the true 'purpose' of Federal legislation is to keep other States out of online gambling, just as they did with PASPA in sports betting.

"Reuters: Reid, Heller, Barton to introduce federal poker bills this spring"


hahaha, likely story every year from these clowns. It is just their way to slow down the state legislation process from passing gambling related material at the state route because these bills have a 99.99% chance of failing in our stupid government layout to pass bills. Federal route would be the way to go but obviously any questionable bill will never make it through congress... we should concentrate all efforts on the state route.

TAMiller, I don't have an opinion about whether a law authorizing online poker, but prohibiting other online gambling would be tested under a strict scrutiny or rationale means test. However, I will opine that it does not matter because SCOTUS will uphold the law regardless of the test. When was the last timme that SCOTUS ruled that a federal law violated its power under the Commerce Clause? It should have done so in the Obamacare case, but Justice Roberts folded at the last minute.

If SCOTUS upholds Obamacare, it will uphold any federal law dealing with online gambling. I'm not saying that it should be that way, just saying that it is that way.

i dont even care about it a federal bill anymore

You answered your own question, JP, the most recent case of SCOTUS ruling that sections of a Congressional Act were unconstitutional exercises of their Commerce Clause authority was the ACA, both the individual mandate and the coercion of States to withdraw existing medicare benefits.

The court was able to find a different interpretation of the individual mandate, ruling it a proper exercise of their Tax and Spend authority, but there won't be such a bailout opportunity for an online poker bill.

What the court (Roberts) did for the ACA was unique but not a precedent for States rights, as the mandate is for private individuals not the States, when it comes to States rights the court has been consistent since National League of Cities , through New York and Printz, if Congress wants to preempt States using the Commerce Clause on a mere rational basis level of scrutiny it needs only to pass three hurdles;

1) The Act must be generally applicable, they can't place States on a lower footing than private citizens, corporations or the Federal government.

2) The Act must actually relate directly to commerce, not a gun that could be used in commerce or a crime which could inhibit commerce.

3) Most importantly, the courts have held over and over that Congress actually has to vote for what authority it is they are trying yo usurp from the States, otherwise there would be no repercussion for their voting decisions.

They can't disguise preemption through coercion, commandeering or in the case of PASPA establishing a national prohibition on sports betting which exempts one State without anyone having ever had to face his/her constituents for having cast such a ballot (private sports betting and pools are prohibited by State laws).

If congress wants to ban all online gambling it needs to vote to ban all online gambling, if it wants to ban only casino games while allowing peer-to-peer contests played for money it needs to vote that way, if it wants to preempt States only in the area of poker regulation it needs to vote that way, but they can't vote to have their cake, share it with Nevada and eat it too.

So if Congress can write an online poker bill which passes those three examinations then we will have nothing to worry about, but none of the previous bills made it over hurdle number one.

one has to wonder if PStars is delaying their acquisition of Atlantic Club because of a looming Federal Bill that would retain a bad actor clause.

PokerStars is delaying purchase until they get a NJ license, if/when that is successful they will want to close the deal as quickly as possible because any federal bill is likely to include a grandfather clause for anyone previously approved by a qualified (experienced) State.

Caesars/AGA wants to do anything/everything they can to prevent/delay that from happening, and if it does happen, I'll expect PokerStars/PPA to turn on a dime and revert to supporting Federal legislation.

Actually G911 ran a brief story about Barton over a week ago.

Really though, we gotta watch this close, we are getting lots of positive movement from states, any federal bill should only compliment states efforts and clarify states ability to compact with each other and not prevent ROW skins from playing against American skins.

OBG

It wouldn't be a change. PPA supported federal and state bills in the past and may support a new federal bill in the future if it's good for players. That bar is clearly higher now than it was a year or two ago, or course.

I think we still want to play offense on the Hill, if given the opportunity. It's our best defense.

The threat of federal legislation also helps give the states a nudge to move forward on their legislation. In some cases, it's just one or two stakeholders holding up movement in hopes of getting a bigger piece of the pie. If we threaten to take away the pie, they may come into line.

Of course, if it's a bad bill, we can lobby for revisions or oppose it outright.

well, nothing will get the feds moving faster than states trying to exert their rights

If Reid and company have something actionable that looks like the Barton bill or is better than the Reid bill and they want to hold committee meetings on it tomorrow and bring to a floor vote very soon, great, lets make one fast lash push.

After that, this push doesnt deserve our time and effort. You guys have had more wins in the last month than we had in pushing Federal legislation for 6 years. No need to stunt the momentum at the state level with a Harry Reid gift to Caesars/Nevada and NJ certainly must be given the right to proceed on its own.

If Reid and company want our support, they can earn it back by supporting a real player friendly bill and backing it with real political capital.

and bring back casual fridays!!

the best thing that can happen imo IS that more states outright legalize online gambling and/or ipoker

if they combine player pools or not is complete fodder


the main thing is that these senators see that the FEDERAL govt is being cut out of the gambling/ipoker revenue is the single most important incentive that can move them to make it federal

This argument is specious. The feds could simply impose a tax on Internet wagering without also "making it federal", that is without imposing universal federal regulation. There is already an example of this - the federal excise tax on all sports wagering.

As more states come on board with licensed Internet gambling, it will become harder to pass a federal bill which imposes federal rules and oversight on the activity, not easier.