The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) is encouraging a major “choice.”
According to PokerNewsDaily, this choice is for each state “whether or not they want to pursue the legalization and regulation of online gambling.”
This encouragement has only been recent. According the report in question, the NCSL “formally took a stance against the Restoration of America’s Wire Act in August.” This was not the first time the NCSL voiced their opinion on online gambling. Before they formally announced their stance, it “was preceded in early April by a letter the NCSL wrote to the leaders of both the United States Senate and House of Representatives in which it protested the Sheldon Adelson-backed bill that aims to outlaw online gambling in the country.”
What caused the NCSL to make a stance like this? Mainly it was the push by Sheldon Adelson to reinstate the American Wire Act to its original form.
PokerNewsDaily explains that the American Wire Act “made it illegal to use wire communications for sports betting. As online gambling gained popularity in the past decade, though, the DoJ interpreted the ban on sports betting to include all gambling over various forms of wire communications. Just before Christmas 2011, though, the DoJ revisited its opinion, declaring that the Wire Act applied only to sports betting, not other gambling like poker.”
So, though it appears the pro online gamblers have gained a new ally in their camp, I wouldn’t count my chickens before they hatch. The report clarified that, “It does not necessarily say that the NCSL is pro-online gambling, just that it wants states to retain the right to determine whether or not it should be legal within their own borders.”
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