Rep. Dina Titus reignites Office of Legal Counsel issue in letter to AG Rod Rosenstein
US Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s staff at the federal Justice Department must have by now become adept at handling letters urging the AG to overrule a September 2011 opinion from the influential Office of Legal Counsel at the Department concerning the applicability of the 1961 Wire Act to online gambling.
The opinion, which effectively gives individual US states the right to make intrastate online gambling laws that do not include sports betting, caused consternation in anti-online gambling quarters and since then there have been a number of impassioned letters from different political and other groupings seeking the AG’s commitment to overturn the opinion… or maintain it.
The latest was fired off this week by Nevada congressional Rep. Dina Titus, who urged Rosenstein to resist attempts to influence him to do away with the opinion and instead stand by what is regarded by many as a very professional, well researched and comprehensively considered opinion well within the Department’s mandate.
The issue – and those involved – remains largely political, with lobbyists active behind the scenes for one faction or the other, and politicians and regulators being persuaded to campaign accordingly…there does not appear to be significant public interest in what many see essentially as technical legislative and political manoeuvring.
Aides to Rep. Titus told Las Vegas reporters that her letter this week to Rosenstein was motivated in part by the large volume of letters she has received from gambling companies expressing concern to her office about a possible reversal of the Justice Department opinion.
“In Las Vegas, we have seen that a regulated market is always better than an illegal one,” Titus wrote. “Internet gambling will not go away with a reversal of Wire Act guidance; it will merely push more consumers into black markets.”
A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment on Titus’s letter, and would not say whether the department is considering changes to its stance regarding internet gambling.
There is now a five-year store of practical experience and information on how effectively online gambling has been licensed and regulated in states like Nevada, New Jersey and Delaware, with Pennsylvania currently working on its regulations following a positive passage for appropriate intrastate laws earlier this year.
Regulators have demonstrated very effectively that geo-location and other technologies, can with strict enforcement build consumer-safe, tax paying and successful enterprises that answer the undoubted public demand for online gambling services.
Finally, if the US Supreme Court rules against the federal Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act in the New Jersey case, that could see a significant widening in sports betting that is currently restricted to just four JS states.