The administration of President Joe Biden is pleading with an appeals court to uphold a deal that gave the Seminole Tribe control over sports betting in all of Florida. The action was taken around nine months after U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich invalidated the expanded gambling agreement with the Seminoles on November 22, 2021 putting a halt to sports betting in the state.
The Biden administration's choice to permit the gambling pact to go into force was defended in a brief submitted in August by the U.S. Department of the Interior. Governor Ron DeSantis signed the 30-year gaming agreement between the state and the tribe in April of last year.
The Seminoles were required to pay the state at least $2.5 billion over the first five years in exchange for having monopoly authority over sports betting in Florida and having the choice to also offer roulette and craps in their venues.
Friedrich's decision in November came as a result of a lawsuit brought by a number of Florida casino owners who claimed that the sports betting proposal violated the law and would have a major impact on the industry, particularly on local casinos and other gambling venues located in Florida.
Under the Florida-Seminoles accord, gamblers were permitted to use mobile devices to make bets anywhere in the state as long as those bets were processed through computer servers located on the tribe's properties, which the agreement claimed constituted gambling on tribal land.
Friedrich rejected the agreement, however, claiming it was in violation of the federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, which requires state-sanctioned gaming to take place on tribal grounds, and called this type of sports betting "fiction".
Additionally, Friedrich ruled that Interior Secretary Deb Haaland made a mistake by allowing the agreement to take effect last summer and nullified other agreements made as part of the compact. In contrast, Haaland's attorneys claimed in their most recent brief that Friedrich was mistaken since the compact only permitted betting on tribal territories and therefore the secretary was required to permit it to take effect.
According to the Miami Herald, lawyers for the U.S. Department of Justice, which represents Haaland and her agency, wrote in a 75-page brief: "The secretary has no duty - nor even any authority - to disapprove a compact that validly authorizes gaming on Indian lands simply because the compact also contemplates that the state will enact legislation permitting persons outside Indian lands to participate in that gaming".
Justice Department lawyers argued that "provisions in the compact reflect a permissible hybrid approach wherein gaming activity that occurs off of the tribe's Indian lands is authorized under state law, and gaming activity that occurs on Indian lands is authorized by IGRA pursuant to the compact" in a brief submitted last year to support Haaland's decision to allow the compact to take effect.
The Biden administration, however, reversed its stance on the August brief, claiming that Haaland's examination of the compact was limited to operations authorized to take place on the Seminoles' lands.
It was stated in August's brief that "the legality of any non-Indian land activities discussed in a compact is instead a matter of state law: If the courts ultimately decide that those activities are not permitted by state law, then they will not be permitted, regardless of what the compact contemplates".
Last month, gambling and regulatory law expert Daniel Wallach told reporters that the federal government is making "preposterous" claims that "falsely characterize" the case's record. Wallach asserted that the Biden administration has "undergone a metamorphosis" in reaching its present arguments and that the agreement "expressly legalized" internet sports betting in the entire state.
"They are making claims about the compact's facts that are refuted by the document's clear language. The compact clearly permits online sports betting, and engaging in such conduct is what violates the IGRA", he stated.
Attorneys for the tribe said that Friedrich erred by denying their request to intervene in the legal dispute brought by the pari-mutuels in a different brief submitted in August. The tribe has asserted a right to sovereign immunity that helps protect it from lawsuits in its request to have the case dismissed.
Lawyers for the Seminoles claimed Friedrich erred by neglecting to include the tribe as a "necessary party" in the complaint and by failing to "meaningfully evaluate the tribe's immunity".
According to the Seminoles' counsel, the tribe "has a broad and particular interest in sustaining the 2021 compact, which is crucial to the resolution of ongoing conflict between the tribe and pari-mutuel facilities, and to mending the long-standing rift between the tribe and the state".
Supporters said that the agreement with the Seminoles over sports betting would be compliant with a 2018 constitutional amendment that demands statewide voter approval for any expansions of gambling in Florida. Amendment 3 mandates that any gambling-related expansions be put up for statewide vote through citizens' initiatives.
The Seminoles briefly introduced a mobile sports betting app last fall, but after Friedrich's decision, they abandoned the online wagers. According to the assessment by state economists, Florida collected $187.5 million under the agreement between October 2021 and February 2022, but the tribe stopped making payments in March, in part due to the country's economic recession.
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