The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) filed a lawsuit against the state of Wisconsin claiming its new online sports betting law is illegal. The conservative group announced it had filed Wednesday on behalf of Brown County Taxpayers Association and Citizens Defending Liberty.
Wisconsin’s new law allows for tribal-only online sports betting and calls for bets to be considered placed where received, meaning that any bet placed anywhere in the state would be considered to have be placed in Indian Country if it flows through a tribal server. Since the law was passed in April, tribes and state lawmakers have started negotiating new compacts. From there, the compacts would have to be approved by the U.S. Department of the Interior and then published in the Federal Register before sports betting could go live.
Per the lawsuit in Waukesha County Circuit Court, WILL attorneys argue that state lawmakers don’t have the power to expand gaming. They wrote that in 1993, “Wisconsinites adopted a constitutional
amendment that bars the Legislature from ‘authoriz[ing] gambling in any form,’ except for (1) bingo and raffles licensed by the state; (2) pari-mutuel on-track betting, and (3) the state lottery.” In addition, WILL argues that state lawmakers violated the Equal Protection Act by creating “benefit for some—not all—which it distributes based on membership in an Indian tribe, i.e., based upon race.”
Per the complaint, WILL is also asking for any future attempts to expand gaming to be blocked.
Commercial operators pushed back
When Gov. Tony Evers signed the sports betting bill into law, Wisconsin became the second state to approve the hub-and-spoke model for tribal sports betting. So far, the only state with live sports betting where bets are considered placed where received is Florida. That state has one gaming tribe, the Seminoles, while Wisconsin has 11 gaming tribes.
In November 2021, in-person sports betting debuted in the state at the Oneida Casino. Since then, other tribes have added in-person wagering as the state’s tribes have a “me-too” clause in their compacts, which allows tribes to negotiate for the same benefit or gaming expansion as other tribes.
Because the new law will allow for online sports betting under an Indian Gaming Regulatory Act framework, commercial operators would be required to pay tribes 60% of revenue if they partner. Commercial operators argued during the legalization process that they would be shut out of the state, and it remains unclear whether tribes will partner with operators or launch white-label platforms.
