With football season approaching, sports betting could soon be returning to Florida. A federal appeals court recently ruled in the Seminole tribe’s favor and mandated the Department of Interior to restore an agreement that made the tribe the sole sports betting operator in the state.
Florida originally granted the Seminoles, owner of the Hard Rock casinos, as the only gaming entity allowed to accept sports wagering by updating the tribe’s compact in May 2021. The deal also allowed for two additional casinos. Later in the year, Magic City Casino and Bonita Springs Poker Room sued the Department of the Interior challenging the agreement.
A judge’s ruling in a lower court in November 2021 blocked sports betting. The latest ruling from late June tosses that out and potentially allows sports betting to begin again in the coming weeks. However, experts note that the tribe may face suits in state court.
“The ruling paves the way for an explosion of online betting in Florida if the tribe relaunches its Hard Rock Sportsbook betting app,” the Tampa Bay Times reports, “and pursues the possibility of two new casinos in South Florida. But gambling opponents said the decision also opens the door for additional legal challenges.”
Court Rules Seminole Agreement Didn’t Violate Law
The Seminoles’ originally reached a 30-year agreement with the state. This also allowed the group to add roulette and craps at Hard Rock properties with the state receiving at least $2.5 billion over the first five years of the agreement.
But in 2018, voters approved a constitutional amendment barring any gaming expansion within the state. The compact agreement required Seminole servers to be located on tribal lands. In essence, this allowed betting from around the state but “processed” on Seminole lands.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit argued that the Department of Interior shouldn’t have approved the compact and that it violated federal Indian gaming law. The three-judge panel disagreed with that contention.
“IGRA (the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act) does not prohibit a gaming compact – which is, at bottom, is an agreement between a tribe and a state – from discussing other topics, including those governing activities ‘outside Indian lands,'” the court noted.
However, the court also noted that the issue could face scrutiny in state courts. The plaintiffs could appeal for a ruling from the entire appeals court or even appeal to the Supreme Court. State officials were pleased with the ruling.
“We will continue working with the Seminole Tribe of Florida to ensure the success of this historic compact – the largest gaming compact in U.S. history – which will lead to over $20 billion in revenues for the people of Florida,” said Jason Mahon, a spokesman for Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).
Changes to Federal Tribal Compacts?
The appeals ruling may pave the way for more tribal casino sports betting in other states, according to some legal experts. The ruling allows tribes to locate gaming servers on their lands but still accept wagers from players across the state.
Tribes could now renegotiate their compacts to allow them to operate mobile sports betting within that state in return for revenue heading to state coffers. Some have predicted states like California could see tribes offering mobile gaming no matter the results of state statutes or voter initiatives.
That “hub and spoke” system, however, may face further scrutiny and some legal experts predict the issue will be appealed to the Supreme Court. Gaming attorney Daniel Wallach is one of those and agrees with the plaintiffs in the case that statewide online gaming isn’t allowed under federal Indian gaming law.
“The language in the statute makes crystal clear that gaming activity on Indian lands are the outer limits of what a compact can authorize,” he told Yahoo News. “This is the first court that reached a different conclusion.”
State courts could also rule the agreement violates the 2018 constitutional amendment banning gaming expansion. Gaming expert and legal professor I. Nelson Rose believes the state amendment supersedes any compact agreement.
“It doesn’t matter that this court decided that IGRA allows the Secretary of Interior to approve compacts for off-reservation gambling,” he noted in his Gambling and the Law blog. “The decision does not bind any state nor any tribe, not even Florida nor the Seminoles, neither of whom were parties to the suit. Further, the Court itself made it clear the issue depends entirely upon state law, not IGRA.”
Rose also adds: “The Florida Constitution was amended in 2018 to give the voters alone, not the governor and state legislature, the power to expand ‘casino gambling,’ defined as ‘any of the types of games typically found in casinos and that are within the definition of Class III gaming in IGRA.'”
It’s a good bet this issue isn’t completely resolved yet.
