Chief Justice John Roberts has temporarily placed a hold on a lower court ruling affirming the legality of the multibillion-dollar gaming agreement between the Seminole Tribe and the state of Florida.
Roberts issued the order, which stays a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that green-lighted the Florida sports-betting compact, on Oct. 12, but a Florida professor specializing in gaming law said he doesn’t expect the high court to rule on the merits of the case.
“It’s absolutely meaningless,” Robert Jarvis, a professor of law at Nova Southeastern University, told the Florida Record. “It has absolutely no impact at all. … At the end of the day this is all a lot of noise about nothing.”
The U.S. solicitor general, acting on behalf of the Department of the Interior, had advised the Supreme Court to deny the application filed by West Flagler Associates, which owns the Magic City Casino in Miami. The federal government has declined to oppose the Florida gaming compact.
Jarvis said he expects the high court to deny a petition West Flagler plans to file by December. Requests for stays are used to simply freeze the status quo until the entire court can review the issues, he said.
Roberts’ action technically stops the tribe from restarting its sports betting operation, but Jarvis said the tribe won’t be restarting its sports gaming system until litigation over the compact – which includes a separate lawsuit before the Florida Supreme Court – has run its course.
“Sports betting is coming,” he said. “It could be a year from now, or it could be three years from now.”
The 2021 Florida gaming compact would have offered the Seminole Tribe an exclusive right to offer online sports betting in Florida, including in areas outside of tribal lands and on the tribe’s betting app. Compact opponents contend that such a monopoly that extends betting off tribal lands may violate the equal protection clause to the Constitution.
“No case supports giving an Indian tribe such a naked preference that is untethered to its unique sovereign status, its tribal lands and its culture,” West Flagler’s petition to the U.S. Supreme Court states.
Compact opponents also contend that the Florida voters would have to approve a referendum in order to authorize any form of casino gambling, based on the provisions of a 2018 initiative.
Pari-mutuel interests may oppose the Seminole gaming agreement, but “there is nobody who is against this that has any power,” Jarvis said, adding that the biggest loser in the lengthy litigation may be the state of Florida, which stands to lose the enhanced revenue it would receive from the tribe while the matter is being litigated.
The applicants declined a request for comment.
“Absent a stay, the compact will give rise to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of sports betting transactions that violate both state and federal law before this court has the opportunity to address the merits,” West Flagler said in its application for the administrative stay. “The (District of Columbia) circuit opinion enables a dramatic change in public policy on legalized gaming that, once started, may be difficult to stop. It is in the public interest to preserve the status quo with respect to online gaming until such time as this court has a chance to review Applicants’ petition for a writ of certiorari.”