Legal online betting is growing very common in various states across the United States. For quite some time now, many of the states have authorized legal online betting on horse racing, and recently many states were added to the basket when it comes to other forms of legalized online gambling.
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A legal opinion by the Department of Justice represented a big change in how the federal government interprets the Wire Act. In this opinion, the Department of Justice especially made clear that the Wire Act applies only to sports betting and does not apply to other forms of online gaming. This interpretation permitted individual states to legalize and regulate new forms of online gaming completely independently.
Legalized sports gambling has continued its expansion in the different states of America, triggered following the recent ruling by the United States Supreme Court that overturned the federal ban. While Nevada was the first state that legalized sports gambling, other states such as Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Mississippi have done the same.
Nevertheless, the Department of Justice complicated matters with an unexpected choice to restore to interpretation of the Wire Act. According to the newer opinion from the DOJ, the Wire Act would apply to all gambling activities. The implications of this decision are still unknown; nevertheless, the growing number of states introducing sports betting legislation seems to have become immune to this government intervention.
Although the legalization of sports betting and gambling is to some extent a separate act, little has been made of the interaction between state law and federal law. With the ruling that effectively ended the federal sports betting ban, it is becoming increasingly important to understand how both types of laws affect gamblers in individual states.
There are two main sets of laws that affect gambling:
For example, states were not able to legalize or regulate sports betting while PASPA was in place. After its scaffoldings came tumbling down, states could then allow legalization and regulation of sports betting. Some states took on sports betting, while others forbade it completely.
State laws also deal with specific details of gambling regulations, such as:
This explains the wide variation in gambling laws from one state to another. What may be legal in one state may be illegal in another, making it necessary to investigate each state law by itself.
In general, the trend in the United States has pushed towards increasingly more accepting views on gambling. No state has made any significant moves backwards in gambling in recent memory, and many have expanded the options legally allowed for their citizens. How this all develops will be updated state by state so that gamblers understand the latest changes in legality.
Due to the Supreme Court ruling, individual states now have the power to legalize and regulate sports betting at their discretion. This shift was a dramatic change from the previous situation when the PASPA prohibited most states from allowing sports betting. Only Nevada had a complete exemption to allow it to offer true, single-game sports betting, and Delaware and Oregon had limited exemptions allowing a few specific forms of sports lotteries, with sports betting pools not being for profit in Montana.
When PASPA was struck down by the Supreme Court, sports betting wasn't legalized overnight in America. Instead, it meant that states could take that initiative to change their legislation, which would allow for the piecemeal legalization of sports betting across the United States. Each state will have to pass its own legislation for sports betting in order to come into law.