U.S. Senators Lindsey Graham and Dianne Feinstein are pushing the Department of Justice to reconsider a 2011 DOJ ruling that allowed states to introduce online gaming within their borders.
The senators sent a letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein asking that the ruling be revisited.
In 2011, the Department of Justice ruled that the Wire Act of 1961—which concerned transmission of racing results across telephone lines—only addressed sports betting across state lines and not online gaming within a state’s borders.
Three states—Nevada, New Jersey and Delaware—quickly allowed online gambling under the interpretation and have been offering online gaming for several years. Only Pennsylvania has been added to the list as the state recently passed legislation to allow online casino gaming, though no sites have gone active. Several other states also offer online lotteries.
In the letter, Graham and Feinstein noted that the department had interpreted the Wire Act as prohibiting online gambling until the 2011 decision.
“Internet gambling takes gambling too far,” they wrote. “It preys on children and society’s most vulnerable.”
Graham and Feinstein are both sponsors of the Restore America’s Wire Act legislation which has been introduced in Congress. The bill, however, has floundered for several years and gained little traction. The bill is supported by Las Vegas Sands owner Sheldon Adelson, who has largely funded lobbying efforts for the bill.
The letter, however, focuses on the 2011 decision and the effect of online gambling. Graham and Feinstein are both members of the Senate Judiciary Committee and said they are concerned with whether the FBI has the resources to effectively oversee a growing online gambling industry.
“Online casinos are already opening across state lines pursuant to compacts and states are contemplating opening up their online casinos to foreign markets,” they wrote. “We fear that unless DOJ promptly revisits its 2011 opinion, our prediction that online casinos could sweep across our country could come to pass.”
Feinstein and Graham sent a similar letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions in May urging him to restore the department’s practice of enforcing the Wire Act against online gambling. Sessions, in his confirmation hearing, said he did have concerns about the 2011 opinion and would revisit it, but there has been no news on the decision since then.
“Concerns about the proliferation of online gambling are bipartisan and span the political spectrum,” Feinstein and Graham wrote in their letter last week. “The 2011 DOJ opinion needs to be revisited and withdrawn, with the question of whether online casinos should be permitted in the United States properly returned to Congress to determine.”
