The IiPay Nation of Santa Ysabel was told by a federal judge that the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) trumps the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. The tribe, therefore, has been ordered to halt its offering of internet gambling which includes Desert Rose online bingo site and the online poker room, Private Table.
Federal Judge, Anthony Battaglia, ruled in southern California that the regulations of UIGEA take precedence over Indian gambling laws. In his 34 page judgement, Battaglia said: “It is beyond dispute that IGRA applies to only that which is conducted on Indian lands. But what of gaming that derives from servers located on Indian lands and utilizes the internet to reach beyond the borders of Indian country to patrons physically located within states where gambling is illegal? This is precisely the issue presented by this case.”
According to Judge Battaglia, Santa Ysabel Interactive, the online gambling operator, is in violation of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, and has been since it launched Desert Rose online bingo for real money play in 2014. State and federal authorities have been challenging the existence of Desert Rose since it launched. They argued in their lawsuit that the tribe was not doing enough to keep punters out who were not physically located in the tribal lands. The judge ruled against the tribe’s claim that the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act exempted them from the UIGEA.
Introduced in 2006, the federal UIGEA law, regulates online gambling in the United States. According to wording from the Act, the UIGEA “prohibits gambling businesses from knowingly accepting payments in connection with the participation of another person in a bet or wager that involves the use of the internet and that is unlawful under any federal or state law”.
This is not the first time that a tribal group has attempted to launch an online gaming platform from their land. An online poker website was launched by the Iowa Tribe of Oklahoma this year, and said that they will offer real money games to internal players from 2017. When these plans were challenged by state authorities, a Western District of Oklahoma judge sided with the tribe and said that there were “no genuine” issues to prevent the tribe from offering Class II online gaming to offshore, international, non-US based players.
