Online gambling dodges the RAWA bullet again

Despite strong rumours and speculation, a federal ban on internet gambling via a resurrection of the Wire Act did not emerge in the lame duck session of the 114th US Congress, which ended this week.

Despite bills in the Senate (Sen. Tom Cotton’s SB 3326) and the House (Rep. Mike Fitzgerald’s HB 6453) fears that an attempt would be made to attach the bills to unrelated appropriation bills did not materialise.

That means a fresh start in the 115th Congress, although that will not involve Fitzgerald, who announced earlier this year that term regulations would not permit him to stand for election again.

Observers have noted that a strategy that appears to be emerging in anti-online gambling campaigns is aimed at discrediting and overthrowing the key 2011 opinion by the legal wing of the Department of Justice which concluded that the Wire Act was intended solely to combat sports betting and should not be used as a weapon against online gambling generally.

Attacks on the opinion have been appearing in AG appeals to the incoming Trump administration and in political and media discourse, and it would appear likely that it will be used again in 2017, along with the usual Restoration of America’s Wire Act campaign misinformation disseminated widely by well-paid PR, lobbyist and political sources.

How the new administration will handle this long-running issue remains to seen.