Senators seek reversal of DOJ opinion
The Casino.org website cited a Washington, D.C. think tank in reporting that U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent, a Pennsylvania Republican, plans to insert language from the stalled Restoration of America’s Wire Act, or RAWA, into an upcoming federal appropriations bill.
RAWA is a bill supported by Las Vegas Sands Chairman Sheldon Adelson that would reverse the 2011 U.S. Department of Justice opinion that the 1961 federal Wire Act only banned online sports betting, and did not apply to online gaming. That opinion opened the way to legalization of iGaming by New Jersey, Delaware and Nevada, with several other states expected to pass bills legalizing it in the near future.
RAWA would state that all online gambling is illegal under federal law, and not just sports betting. Dent’s state, of course, is home to the Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem, which has opposed Pennsylvania’s bill to legalize iGaming, in line with Adelson’s position. Adelson has threatened to hold up expansion plans at the Sands if online gaming is passed.
The website’s report cited the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington limited-government think tank, as the source of the report on Dent’s plans. This would be Dent’s second attempt to slip RAWA language banning internet gaming into an appropriations bill. In spring of 2016, he tried the same tactic, following the lead of Senate RAWA sponsor Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Both attempts to add RAWA as a rider to spending bills failed.
RAWA has not gathered sufficient support in either chamber of Congress to get out of committee. Hearings held in the House served to solidify opposition to the bill. The appropriations bill tactic was attempted as a way to sneak an iGaming ban through without debate.
Meanwhile, other opponent of online gaming in the U.S. Congress are taking another route in attacking the 2011 DOJ opinion. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia is leading an effort to pressure U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions to review the opinion that the Wire Act does not ban iGaming.
During his confirmation hearings, Sessions testified that he was “shocked” at the opinion that opened the gates to online gaming, and that we would re-examine the issue after a “careful study.” However, Sessions recused himself from considering the issue in June, after he hired longtime friend Charles Cooper as his personal attorney to deal with issues surrounding Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Cooper is a lobbyist for the Coalition to Stop Internet Gaming, the anti-online gaming lobby group funded by Adelson.
Warner wrote a letter to Sessions dated July 5 in which he urged the attorney general to revisit the issue, alleging that online gaming sites are “especially fertile platforms for the facilitation of money laundering, collusion and other illegal activities,” and that the “potentially predatory nature of online gambling represents a heightened threat to economically vulnerable populations.”
Senators Dianne Feinstein and Graham wrote a similar letter to Sessions in May, urging him to “restore the department’s longstanding practice of enforcing the Wire Act against online gaming by revoking the (2011) opinion.”
