A Kentucky judge upheld the 2023 law that banned gray-area “skill games,” rejecting claims by supporters that the ban violated various sections of the state constitution.
The unlicensed machines, which cropped up in convenience stores, gas stations and bars across Kentucky, were banned by the law, and other bills to legalize and regulate them have failed, as opponents of the machines argued that legalizing them would have constituted the largest expansion of gambling in the state’s history.
Kentucky allows machine gaming only at racetracks, in the form of historical horse racing machines.
Supporters sued to overturn the law, claiming it violated free speech rights and arbitrarily banned the games in violation of the state constitution.
Franklin County Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd rejected those claims in the form of a summary judgment requested by the state attorney general’s office.
“It was entirely unreasonable, based on Kentucky’s long history of regulating gambling… for an investor to expect that any machine operating on the fringe zones of legality as a gambling device would be exempt from subsequent regulation or prohibition by the Legislature,” the judge wrote, adding that the law banning the games was “a lawful exercise of the Legislature’s police power to regulate gambling for the legitimate governmental interest in addressing the social harms of unregulated forms of gambling.”
Kentucky House Speaker David Osborne said the ruling “further confirms that these games were illegal and operating without any of the appropriate regulatory guidelines,” according to the Associated Press.
An attorney for the plaintiffs, J. Guthrie True, said in an emailed statement to the AP that his team “will be evaluating the ruling and consulting with our clients concerning an appeal.”
