As we have already specified in our previous articles, casinos online occupy a very unstable position in the United States nowadays. The worst thing is that legislation varies greatly depending on various states and while some states don’t force some official restrictions on the online gambling, some others claimed this industry to be officially illegal. Can you guess who suffers from such unstable legislative situation? Ordinary Americans, of course! In this article we will look at the legislative situation concerning casinos online in various states of our country.
The first state to act strongly against casinos online was Kentucky. In 2008 a Governor of this state issued an order ( approved by the court) to obtain domain names of over 140 online casinos. Thank god, online casino operators didn’t twiddle their thumbs when this happened and appealed to the court. Lower court ruled in favour of the government of the state, but they were not satisfied and appealed to the higher court that ruled in their favour finally. Right now the state appealed to the State Supreme Court and its important decision is expected in June.
Washington is another state that is notorious for its outrageous action against online gambling sites. In 2006 online gambling wastransferred to a felony of Class C that includes child pornography and torturing of animals!!! Before this strange decision, playing in casinos online was valued as a gross misdemeanor in Washington city. It’s just surprising what is so bad about online gambling that online players should be equated to watchers of child pornography!!! All kinds of online gambling were outlawed except for horse racing. Therefore, if you are planning a trip to this state, you’d better not gamble online there you know=)
Minnesota is one more state that outlawed all casinos online in summer 2009. Its government issued an order for Minnesota internet providers to block all existing internet casinos. As a result more than 200 gambling sites were blocked.
These three states are the most serious opponents of online gambling. However, all other states that recognized online gambling as the helpful source of the revenue also sufferedafter the UIGEA Act was passed in the Congress in 2006. This Act outlawed the usage of credit cards and most e-commerce systems for online gambling. Passing of this Act affected practically all states of the United States. For example, New Hampshire ran a great national lottery. Tickets for thislottery could be bought online that was extremely fast and convenient for everybody. However, the UIGEA Act ruled that lotteries are certain types of online gambling as well, therefore credit cards cannot be used for buying their tickets via internet. Right now we can witness that the popularity of new Hampshire national lottery is sinking rapidly and state loses great profit that is so required right now, in the period oftough economic crisis. Some other states like Illinois that planned to launch the lottery, abandoned this idea as well.
Such situation is really sad, especially considering the fact that most other countries of the world don’t put any restrictions on the online gambling. For example, British Government passed a Gambling Act in 2006 and formed a white list of most trustworthy online casino jurisdictions. All gambling sites based there were allowed to advertise their service on national TV!! A state ofCalifornia tries to make some steps towards legalizing of online gambling. In January 2009 it presented a draft legislation to legalize online poker rooms. However, this legislation has not been passed yet. Why? Probably because California government doesn’t want to stand out among all other American states.
