Lotteries Not Impacted by Wire Act Revision, DoJ Claims

After the US Department of Justice (DoJ) revised the Wire Act from 1961, many affected parties stood up against such a decision. Now, DoJ claims that the lotteries are not impacted by it…

…because the Wire Act doesn’t mention anything regarding whether or not interstate and online lotteries are legal.

Rod Rosenstein’s Memo

Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein, said in his memo that the DoJ is still examining if state lottery operations should fall under the Wire Act’s jurisdiction or not.

The Department also claims that there is actually no reason for a legal dispute, and because of that should be dismissed.

It is stated in Rosenstein’s memo that DoJ’s attorneys shouldn’t enforce the revised Wire Act on state lotteries until they finish with the official review…

…because DoJ states that the legislation actually applies to all forms of gambling and not just sports betting.

If it decides that the Wire Act should also be applied to interstate lottery operations, the lotteries will be given 90 days in order to have enough time to make sure their operations are in tune with the federal law.

Facing Legal Challenges

This filing was brought up as a part of a legal dispute that is currently active, where New Hampshire started on behalf of the state lottery corporation.

It actually addressed the New Hampshire Lottery Corporation’s memorandum of law objecting to the DoJ’s motion to dismiss the case, that was filed on March 25.

In this legal case, the lottery said that DoJ ignored the questions regarding whether the newly-revised Wire Act applies to state lotteries or not.

Nevertheless, the Department said that the lottery cannot push them to decide if it should include an enforcement position via legal action.

As a result of Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein’s memo, there is no credible threat of prosecution for the state lottery, and as a result, the case should be ended because of the lack of standing.

The New Hampshire Lottery maintains that the revised Wire Act opinion could force it to withdraw certain games…

…which would result in the state losing around $90m a year in revenue.

Putting a ban on interstate gambling transmissions could cut sales by around 25% per year, with a ban on multi-state games such as Powerball likely to reduce lottery revenue by up to $80m each year.

Enforcement Delayed Until June

The United States Department of Justice, according to some US sources, plans on extending the window during which they will not enforce the revised interpretation of the Wire act until mid-June.

DoJ officially announced their revised Wire act opinion on January 15 and said that they will not put it into action in the 90-day period…

…because they wanted to give enough time for stakeholders to make sure their operations were compliant to the legislation.

Since the 90-day period would have to end on April 15, apparently the Department of Justice has decided to extend the non-enforcement window by an additional 60 days.

Source:

“Lotteries not impacted by Wire Act opinion, DoJ claims”, igamingbusiness.com, April 9, 2019.