Fresh Bill to Prohibit Online Gaming Introduced to US Senate

A bill was filed last week by US Senator for Arkansas, Tom Cotton and co-sponsored by Senators Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Lindsay Graham (R-S Carolina), seeking to ban online gambling in the country.

The S.3376 bill aims to overturn a December 2011 Department of Justice (DOJ) interpretation of the 1961 Wire Act, which had previously ruled against online sports betting, and not online casino and poker games. This legislation paved the way for individual states to regulate and license online casino gaming.

S.3376 is described as “a bill to ensure the integrity of laws enacted to prevent the use of financial instruments for funding or operating online casinos are not undermined by legal opinions not carrying the force of law issued by Federal Government lawyers.”

The bill reiterates recent, Sheldon Adelson backed attempts to reaffirm “the prohibition on funding of unlawful internet gambling” and is less a Restoration of the American Wire Act (RAWA), more of a Restoration of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA).

After UIGEA, new state banking codes had to be created, with the Obama administration’s revised understanding resulting in the DOJ’s decision which made financial transactions permissible across “wire communications” for online casino and poker.
The exact content of the bill is undetermined at this stage in the process as Cotton has filed no more than scant details with the Judiciary Committee. The bill was read twice before being referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, leaving it eligible both for debate and voting on its passage.