US Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) have penned a letter to the Attorney General’s office, urging the Trump Administration to reverse the 2011 legal opinion which essentially opened the doors for states to introduce their own online gambling laws.
The Senators point to the fact that Pennsylvania has recently passed online gambling laws and warns that this could open the floodgates to even more states doing the same.
Both Senators have worked against online gambling and poker in the past, Graham more than his Democratic counterpart. Lindsey Graham has pushed legislation to ban igaming, acting as the lawmaker to unofficially represent Sheldon Adelson’s efforts to lobby against efforts to reverse federal online gambling laws. Adelson has spent millions in his campaign to restore the 1961 Wire Act which was reversed by the DOJ in 2011.
Feinstein has, in the past, pushed for Californian lawmakers to refrain from legalizing online poker in the Golden State.
The letter to the Deputy Attorney General, dated November 21st, begins by reminding the government that when the DOJ reversed its interpretation of the Wire Act in 2011, it was warned by anti-gambling crusaders that the opinion had the potential to “usher in the most fundamental change in gambling in our lifetimes by turning every smart phone, tablet and personal computer in our country into a casino available 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.”
The letter says that the opinion essentially repealed legislation that Congress had “carefully and thoughtfully enacted in 2006” [The Unlawful Internet Gambling Act]. The Senators claim that the legislation had been developed over seven years and crafted based on assurances by the DOJ at that time that internet was barred by the Wire Act and other federal criminal laws.
The senators write that internet gambling “takes gambling too far”, claiming that it “preys on children and society’s most vulnerable”.
The letter then turns its attention to Pennsylvania, which recently enacted legislation authorizing internet gambling, warning that “other states are lined up to follow suit”.
“Online casinos are already operating across state lines pursuant to compacts, and states are contemplating opening up their online casinos to foreign markets,” it reads. “We fear that unless DOJ promptly revisits its 2011 opinion, our prediction that online casinos could sweep across our country could come to pass.”
