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Online gambling 101: What the new gambling expansion means for states

Online lotto – and virtual slot machines, blackjack, and poker – could be coming to your state or one near you. Here are five questions on internet gambling, following the US Justice Department's policy reversal late last year, possibly producing a boon to both the industry and state budgets.

5. What's next?

  • By Husna Haq Correspondent

Many states have already approached their legislatures to push through bills that would legalize online lotteries and other Internet gambling. If the bills are approved, residents in early states like New York and Illinois may see Internet lottery games as soon as this spring.

But the case is far from closed, says Kindt.

"Even within the DOJ itself there's considerable backlash behind the scenes on this issue," he says. "And the congressional backlash is formulating right now."

Kindt cited the 2006 Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, which passed the House with 80 percent in favor, as evidence of bipartisan support to ban online gambling.

"There's plenty of opposition," he says. "There's likely to be another opinion after the next election."

In a post on his blog, Gambling and the Law, gambling analyst and Whittier Law professor I. Nelson Rose wrote that he thinks otherwise.

"There is as little chance of this Congress passing a new Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act as there is of it passing a repeal of the UIGEA.… My bet is that … Congress will continue to do nothing, while Internet gambling explodes across the nation, made legal under state laws."

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

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