Forbes report
When the Florida Legislature convenes next week for a special session, lawmakers will be asked to approve a new tribal-state gambling compact that veers decidedly and aggressively across tribal borders. The new compact gives the Seminole Tribe of Florida— the largest tribal gaming operator in the United States—exclusive control over all sports betting conducted statewide, including over mobile devices (regardless of the bettor’s location) and at licensed racetracks and jai-alai facilities located well beyond tribal borders. This arrangement, however, brazenly flouts the 1988 federal law which allows states and Indian tribes to enter into compacts for Class III gaming activities, such as sports betting. That federal law—known as the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (or “IGRA” for short)—mandates that any gaming activities authorized under a state-tribal gaming compact occur only “on Indian lands,” which is specifically defined by IGRA to mean “all lands within the limits of any Indian reservation” or any lands held in trust by the United States for the benefit of any Indian tribe. The new compact, however, authorizes an extensive amount of gambling off tribal lands, such as every online sports bet made in Florida (unless the customer is physically located on Indian lands) and all sports wagers placed from betting windows or kiosks physically located at licensed pari-mutuel facilities.
This “off-reservation” piece will likely spawn two parallel litigation tracks—one brought in a Florida state court asserting that sports betting outside of Indian lands violates the Florida Constitution’s prohibition against non-voter-approved casino gambling, and the other filed in a federal court contending that the same activity also violates IGRA’s strict requirement that all “gaming activity” occur solely on Indian land. While a Florida state constitutional challenge is unlikely to succeed because sports betting does not constitute “casino gambling” for purposes of Amendment 3, a federal lawsuit would be on much stronger (if not rock solid) legal ground based on how strictly federal courts and federal agencies have interpreted the statutory language “gaming activity” and “Indian lands” in the context of IGRA disputes concerning gambling over the Internet and from locations external to tribal land.
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