The U.S. Supreme Court has put what may be the final federal nail in the coffin of an effort to upend the Sunshine State’s sports betting status quo.
In a briefly worded statement, SCOTUS said Monday morning that it denied the so-called petition for a writ of certiorari in the matter of West Flagler Associates Ltd. v. Haaland, a.k.a. the Florida sports betting case.
While Justice Brett Kavanaugh voted in favor of reviewing the matter, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson did not participate in the consideration or decision of the case, enough judges thought there was no need for further scrutiny, as they do with the vast majority of appeals.
That ends the long-running legal saga at the federal level, which dates back to the approval of a gaming compact in 2021 between the state of Florida and the Seminole Tribe, granting the latter control over legal sports betting in the state.
“The Seminole Tribe of Florida applauds today’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to decline consideration of the case involving the Tribe’s Gaming Compact with the State of Florida,” a spokesperson for the tribe said in an email. “It means members of the Seminole Tribe and all Floridians can count on a bright future made possible by the Compact.”
The request to have the U.S. Supreme Court review the Florida sports betting case has been DENIED:https://t.co/9XABHexLfY@Covers pic.twitter.com/brMrfuTVEx
— Geoff Zochodne (@GeoffZochodne) June 17, 2024
The compact came under fire from two parimutuel betting companies with mutual ownership seeking to undo federal approval for the deal, which they initially succeeded in doing before an appeals court reinstated authorization for the agreement last year.
Hard Rock Bet, the Seminole Tribe’s online sports betting brand, launched in Florida in late 2021 before it shut down due to a federal court decision. When that decision was reversed in June 2023, it paved the way for Hard Rock to relaunch in Florida, which it did late last year.
But while the Seminole were confident in the legal foundation for Hard Rock’s return, the court battles weren’t finished. Efforts to undo the compact and its mobile sports betting provisions were still grinding their way through the Supreme Courts of both Florida and the United States.
Both those efforts have now been defeated, putting the Seminole and sports betting via Hard Rock and their casinos in Florida on even firmer legal ground.
Duopoly locked out of monopoly
It also means the largest legal betting market in the U.S. remains firmly in the grasp of the Seminole and Hard Rock, boxing out the likes of DraftKings, FanDuel, and others unless they can reach some sort of deal with the tribe. Hard Rock has seen a noticeable increase in its nationwide market share among online sportsbook operators by virtue of being the sole legal site in Florida.
The compact between Florida and the Seminole has a 30-year term, so tribal control over sports betting in the state is possible until 2051. In return for granting a legal monopoly, the state will receive a share of the revenue generated by the tribe, including $2.5 billion guaranteed over the first five years of the agreement.
But the mobile sports betting provisions particularly rankled opponents, as they believed the compact was authorizing gambling off tribal lands, in violation of federal law and the state constitution requiring a referendum on any gaming expansion. While a judge agreed in 2021 that federal approval of the agreement ran afoul of the law, an appeals court had a different reading of the deal, and that ruling remains intact.
A notable dissent
Justice Kavanaugh’s interest in hearing the West Flagler case is notable, as it was he who wrote last October that the state law involved does raise "serious equal protection issues" to the extent it authorizes the Seminole Tribe alone to conduct certain gaming operations in Florida off its tribal lands.
“But the state law’s constitutionality is not squarely presented in this application, and the Florida Supreme Court is in any event currently considering state-law issues related to the Tribe’s potential off-reservation gaming operations,” the justice wrote.
The Florida Supreme Court has since dismissed the compact challenge before it, ruling that the vehicle through which relief was being sought was not appropriate.
