Quote:
Originally Posted by fnord_too
Won't this case drag on for a while though? Or will it be expedited due to its nature? Even if it is, how could this possibly be decided this year?
Or are you saying that legal opinion is massively in favor of NJ winning (or at least a significant risk in its oppositions eyes) and that this still puts tremendous pressure on?
But in any case, how would UIGEA-II stop the floodgates? My impression was that some states were grandfathered into allowing sports betting, and it is not legal for federal law to allow some states to engage in a form of commerce while excluding others. Would UIGEA-II take away the grandfathered states right to engage in sports betting? (Not to mention the whole quagmire with horse racing).
This whole thing is very confusing to me, could you lay out the possibilities for what federal legislation could do here? I really don't see states that have legal sports betting now getting it taken away, and if they don't how can any federal law stop NJ from having it? Help me get my mind around this please, because I really don't know what to make of all this.
Well, that's what NJ is saying: It is unconstitutional to allow some states (grandfathered in) to have sports betting and bar the rest of the states.
If the sports league challenge to the NJ law succeeds (and it would have to get up to the SCOTUS to bear constitutional weight afaik), then such an argument fails and the federal govt bar on the rest of the states stands.
The sports leagues could then decide to go after Internet gambling in general through passage of UIGEA-II (which, all things considered, would still probably have an ipoker carveout, and the usual state lottery, fantasy sports and horse racing carveouts), which would bar all states that aren't grandfathered in from passing new laws to authorize Internet gambling.
On the flip side, this case puts a fire under states to pass Internet gambling legislation so that they could be grandfathered in under a UIGEA-II, which now throws some gasoline on the fire under Congress to pass a Reid/Kyl bill to stop the states from their log roll.
All in all, I'd say this court case is a boon to getting Reid/Kyl passed. Such a federal bill could eventually fail on the same basis as Christie's NJ sports betting bill (if the bill bans intrastate online wagering), but either way we still get our ipoker.
Bottom line: Legalized iPoker in the US is eventually inevitable, whether through state lotteries, state-licensed casinos or federal legislation (best option, imo). Anything that encourages states to move quicker on legalizing internet gambling in any form adds fuel to the fire for faster action on a Reid/Kyl bill.
Last edited by PokerXanadu; 08-08-2012 at 11:08 AM.