The gambling deal was a significant victory at the time for Gov. Ron DeSantis since he had to personally lobby state lawmakers to approve the agreement in May 2021. | Matt Rourke/AP PhotoFlorida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Seminole Tribe of Florida scored a legal victory Friday after an appeals court refused to block a $2.5 billion gambling deal between the state and the tribe.
The Seminole Tribe hailed the decision but did not say if it would reinstate sports betting in the nation’s third-largest state as a result. The tribe had halted betting on its mobile app in December 2021 due to the litigation. In 2021, U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich with the District of Columbia said the compact was illegal because it allowed people to place sports bets anywhere in the state in violation of federal laws governing gambling on Native American lands. The ruling came in reaction to twin lawsuits filed by rival casino owners, longtime South Florida gambling opponents and a statewide anti-gambling group against U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, who had declined to block the compact.
DeSantis and legislators tried to sidestep that ballot initiative by insisting the new compact was legal because the actual processing of bets occurred on tribal lands even though someone could use a mobile app anywhere in the state. Friedrich said she could not accept this “fiction” and added that, “when a federal statute authorizes an activity only at specific locations, parties may not evade that limitation by ‘deeming’ their activity to occur where it, as a factual matter, does not.
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