During the 2018 midterm elections, Arkansas voters weighed in on Issue 4, a referendum to amend their state constitution to allow full-scale casino gambling. Voters approved the measure by an 8.2% percent margin. The amendment authorized up to four casinos to operate in Arkansas in four separate counties. Before the…
For the first time in decades, sportsbooks can now legally operate in every state that wishes to welcome the practice following the Supreme Court’s decision in May to strike down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (PAPSA). Seven states have already enacted laws regulating sports betting, with many others…
Earlier today, New Jersey won a sweeping victory in Murphy v. NCAA, a case challenging the constitutionality of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (PASPA). As David Apfel and Brian Burgess recently explained, the parties’ arguments focused on whether the federal policy requiring states to maintain prohibitions…
Just recently, Connecticut’s two federally recognized tribes released a letter from the Interior Department, their latest salvo in a struggle with MGM Resorts International over a new casino in the state. The letter has the potential to tip the scales between MGM and the tribes. But first, some background: MGM and the tribes are locked in a legal…
It’s ‘play on’ for the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah). On April 10, a First Circuit Court of Appeals three-judge panel weighed in on the nearly three-and-a-half-year dispute between the Tribe and the Commonwealth, the town of Aquinnah, and the Aquinnah/Gay Head Community Association over the Tribe’s plan to…
In a unanimous decision issued on Friday, authored by outgoing Justice Margot Botsford, Massachusetts’s highest court allowed Mohegan Sun’s challenge to the state Gaming Commission’s 2014 award of a gaming license to competing bidder Wynn MA, LLC, while disallowing similar challenges to the decision brought by the City of Revere…
About a year after New Jersey’s Division of Gaming Enforcement implemented regulations for skill-based machine gaming, “video game slot machines” have finally made their entrance in Atlantic City, to mixed acclaim. Most of the major Atlantic City casinos—Harrah’s, Caesars, and Tropicana—have now installed one of two skill-based machines (in some…
The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent invitation for the Solicitor General to weigh on New Jersey’s sports betting case may give new life to the Garden State’s efforts to expand its gambling portfolio. But in the event that the Court ultimately decides not to hear New Jersey’s case, it is worth…
New Jersey’s years-long battle to allow sports gambling received a significant boost from the U.S. Supreme Court last week, which issued an order inviting the Solicitor General to file a brief in the case (known to Court Watchers as a “CVSG”). The Court’s action keeps alive New Jersey’s push to…
On January 5, at the Massachusetts Gaming Commission’s first meeting of 2017, the Commission posed a series of questions related to the Commission’s promulgation of regulations governing “table game” rules. As resort casinos edge closer to opening their doors to patrons, the Commission is working to establish processes to review…