A lawsuit by Miami parimutuels that challenged the new Seminole gaming compact has been rejected by the U.S. Department of the Interior. Attorneys for Interior filed a 33-page rebuttal to the plaintiff’s charges that the compact’s sports betting provision violates the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA).
The owners of the Magic City Casino in Miami-Dade County and the Bonita Springs Poker Room in Southwest Florida filed the lawsuit, challenging Interior’s decision to allow the compact to move forward. Their attorneys argued the sports-betting plan is a “legal fiction,” because federal law does not authorize bets placed off tribal lands. They also stated that the plan, negotiated by the Seminoles and Governor Ron DeSantis, will have a “significant and potentially devastating impact” on their businesses.
Interior attorneys acknowledged that sports bets would be made by people off tribal property, but argued that the state authorized such bets. They stated, “Federal defendants contend that for federal law purposes, and consistent with federal law, the online sports betting provisions in the compact reflect a permissible hybrid approach wherein gaming activity that occurs off of the tribe’s Indian lands is authorized under state law, and gaming activity that occurs on Indian lands is authorized by IGRA pursuant to the compact.”
The department attorneys also wrote that the compact “permissibly only authorizes gaming that occurs on the tribe’s Indian lands, consistent with IGRA, and does not and could not authorize activity occurring off of the tribe’s Indian lands.”
But plaintiffs’ attorney Hamish Hume argued that IGRA is “focused on gaming on Indian lands. IGRA cannot be used to try and create some sort of loophole” to offer games off tribal lands, Hume said. “That is not the purpose of IGRA. And what has happened is that there are now millions of people all over the state of Florida right now who are not anywhere near Indian lands who are able to place bets through their sports app on their phone or on their laptop that would be illegal, and, in fact, not just illegal but now a felony, if conducted by my parimutuel clients or anyone else.”
Hume said the contention that mobile bets are placed on tribal land because the servers are located there “is an end run around the citizens’ initiative requirement in the Florida constitution.” He was referring a 2018 state constitutional amendment that requires voters to approve gambling expansions. Critics of the sports-betting plan claim it violates the constitutional amendment because it was not approved by voters.
Supporters of the compact’s sports betting provision said it did not require voter approval because sports betting is run by the tribe. In fact, the federal attorneys wrote, “The court should consider refraining from reaching such questions as plaintiffs presumably could and should resolve these issues in an appropriate state court forum.”
District Judge Dabney Friedrich directed the federal attorneys to file additional arguments. He claimed the government was avoiding taking a position on the issue of gambling occurring off tribal land.
In addition to the parimutuels’ lawsuit, two prominent South Florida businessmen and the group No Casinos also are challenging the compact in federal court in Washington, D.C. They allege the federal government’s approval of the compact “adversely impacts plaintiffs’ properties and neighborhoods by, among other things, increasing neighborhood traffic, increasing neighborhood congestion, increasing criminal activity, reducing open spaces and reducing their property values.”
