There’s a non-zero chance some of the finest legal minds in the United States have recently spent time pondering point spreads and same-game parlays in the Sunshine State — all in the name of justice, of course.
The justices of the U.S. Supreme Court indeed met Thursday for a private conference to discuss and vote on whether to review cases, including one that may determine the future of legal Florida sports betting.
SCOTUS is scheduled to release a batch of orders about whether it will or will not approve the so-called petitions for “certiorari” on Monday, which could include a decision on the Florida sports betting matter. At any rate, the odds of the Supreme Court taking the case are long.
“The vast majority of cases filed in the Supreme Court are disposed of summarily by unsigned orders,” the court notes on its website. “Such an order will, for example, deny a petition for certiorari without comment. Regularly scheduled lists of orders are issued on each Monday that the Court sits, but ‘miscellaneous’ orders may be issued in individual cases at any time.”
Nevertheless, a “yes” or “no” from the court will go a long way toward settling the legal debate around the legal status of Florida’s current system for sports betting, which hinges on West Flagler Associates Ltd. v. Deb Haaland, the interior secretary.
That case involves two Florida-based parimutuels owned by the same company requesting SCOTUS take another look at an appeals court decision last year that reinstated federal approval for a gaming compact between the state and the Seminole Tribe.
The compact grants control over sports betting in Florida to the casino-operating Seminole and their Hard Rock Bet online sportsbook. The Seminole relaunched Hard Rock Bet in Florida late last year following the appeals court ruling, and the operator currently enjoys an enviable position as the sole legal sportsbook in the Sunshine State.
On or off?
There are a few arguments floated by the West Flagler group as to why that shouldn’t be the case, including that the federal government wrongfully approved a compact authorizing sports betting off Seminole lands in violation of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA).
In the other corner of the legal battle, the federal government is arguing the appeals court was correct in deciding the compact does not do so and therefore does not violate IGRA. The appeals decision undid a previous judge's ruling that threw out federal approval for the compact.
“[T]he Compact itself authorizes only the betting that occurs on the Tribe’s lands; in this respect, it satisfied IGRA,” the appeals court said. “Whether it is otherwise lawful for a patron to place bets from non-tribal land within Florida may be a question for that State’s courts, but it is not the subject of this litigation and not for us to decide.”
Not us, either
The Supreme Court of Florida has already dealt with another legal challenge of the sports betting status quo, which argued the sports betting-related provisions of the Seminole compact violated a section of the state constitution that requires voter approval to expand gambling.
That “petition for a writ of quo warranto” in Florida was rejected in March.
“Framed as it is, the petition presents nothing other than a challenge to the substantive constitutionality of the law ratifying the compact,” Justice Meredith Sasso wrote in the decision. “But quo warranto is not, and has never been, the proper vehicle to obtain a declaration as to the substantive constitutionality of an enacted law. For that reason, we deny the petition because the relief that Petitioners seek is beyond what the writ of quo warranto provides.”
