On January 14, 2019, the U.S. Department of Justice published a legal opinion that may restrict online gambling. The opinion, dated November 2, 2018, (although only now published) reconsidered the DOJ\u2019s 2011 opinion that declared the Wire Act (18 U.S.C. \u00a7 1084) only applied to sports gambling. After the release of the 2011 opinion, several states, including New Jersey, Delaware and Pennsylvania, launched or moved forward with intrastate online lottery, casino gaming and poker. The new opinion, however, somewhat clouds the landscape regarding these operations. Online gaming businesses would be well advised to quickly determine whether their operations comply with the DOJ\u2019s new reading.<\/p>\n
The reconsideration stems from one phrase in the Wire Act: \u201con any sporting event or contest.\u201d In 2011, the DOJ opined that the Wire Act was ambiguous and \u201cthat the more logical result\u201d was that the phrase \u201con any sporting event or contest\u201d applied to the entirety of the Wire Act, thereby prohibiting only the transmission of \u201cbets or wagers\u201d or \u201cinformation assisting in the placing of bets or wagers\u201d across state lines, if the bet or wager were on a sporting event. This logic follows in part from the Act\u2019s legislative history, which reveals that Congress\u2019 overriding goal in passing the Wire Act was to stop the use of wire communications by organized crime for illegal sports gambling. In 2018, the Supreme Court of the United States, in\u00a0Murphy v. Nat’l Collegiate Athletic Ass’n\u2014<\/i>a decision that paved the way for states to authorize sports betting,\u00a0<\/i>in dicta\u2014noted Congress\u2019 original intent in characterizing a general federal approach to gambling: Operating a gambling business violates federal law only if that conduct is illegal under state or local law.<\/p>\n
Read the full Duane Morris\u00a0Alert<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On January 14, 2019, the U.S. Department of Justice published a legal opinion that may restrict online gambling. The opinion, dated November 2, 2018, (although only now published) reconsidered the DOJ\u2019s 2011 opinion that declared the Wire Act (18 U.S.C. \u00a7 1084) only applied to sports gambling. After the release of the 2011 opinion, several … <\/p>\n Continue reading “Dept. of Justice Reconsiders Its View on the Wire Act… So What Happens Now?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[65,10,34,36,87,48,227,226],"ppma_author":[271],"class_list":["post-339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-casino","tag-frank-digiacomo","tag-gaming","tag-internet","tag-lottery","tag-online-gambling","tag-robert-ruben","tag-wire-act"],"authors":[{"term_id":271,"user_id":6,"is_guest":0,"slug":"duanemorris3","display_name":"Duane Morris","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/843ff6e7a8fe5fc92109b47a45f34b6cf0ea499e6e788db23456c838b0ae6747?s=96&d=blank&r=g","author_category":"1","last_name":"Sullivan","first_name":"Margaret","job_title":"","user_url":"http:\/\/www.duanemorris.com","description":"Visit the Duane Morris website.<\/a>"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/gaminglaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/gaminglaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/gaminglaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/gaminglaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/gaminglaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/gaminglaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/gaminglaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/gaminglaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/gaminglaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/gaminglaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}