GETS BIG WIN

BY DARA

TALLAHASSEE, FL—In a move that could remake Florida’s gaming landscape, a federal appeals court on June 30 overturned a ruling that blocked a deal giving the Seminole Tribe control over sports betting throughout the state.

The unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia reversed a November 2021 decision by a federal judge who halted the agreement. Gov. Ron DeSantis and Seminole Tribe of Florida Chairman Marcellus Osceola Jr. in 2021 signed the 30year deal, which the Legislature ratified.

Owners of Magic City Casino in MiamiDade County and Bonita Springs Poker Room in Southwest Florida filed a lawsuit alleging the sports-betting plan violated federal laws and would cause a “significant and potentially devastating” impact on the pari-mutuels’ businesses.

The “hub-and-spoke” sports-betting plan was designed to allow gamblers anywhere in the state to place bets online, with the bets run through computer servers on tribal property. The deal, known as a compact, said bets “using a mobile app or other electronic device, shall be deemed to be exclusively conducted by the tribe.”

U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich ruled that the plan ran afoul of the federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act which regulates gambling on tribal lands, because it would allow gambling off property owned by the Seminoles.

Friedrich, calling the setup a “fiction,” also invalidated other parts of the compact, finding that U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland was wrong when she allowed the deal to go into effect in summer 2021. The Department of the Interior oversees tribal gaming.

But siding with the department, Friday’s ruling said the Washington, D.C.-based judge erred when she found that the compact violated the federal law, known as IGRA, because it authorized gambling “both on and off” Indian lands.

“We see the case differently,” Judge Robert Wilkins wrote in a 24-page opinion joined by Judges Karen Henderson and J. Michelle Childs.

A gambling compact “can legally authorize a tribe to conduct gaming only on its own lands,” Wilkins wrote. “But at the

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