Sheldon Adelson was just given a cookie. Online gambling is illegal again across the United States, technically, thanks to what could be termed the “run-on sentence heard round the world.” A new interpretation by the Department of Justice of the 1961 Wire Act has just concluded that, because of a conspicuously and suspiciously missing comma, all online gambling violates the Act, and not just sports betting, which is also now technically legal itself anyway ever since PASPA was overturned. If this doesn’t make any sense to you, you’re normal.
Before we get into the asinine details of this nonsense, let’s all calm down. Practically this means nothing for the online gambling industry in the United States, but it will pad the pockets of lawyers aplenty. As my CalvinAyre colleague Steven Stadbrooke aptly notes, “lawyers across the country are licking their lips at the prospect of all those extra billing hours.”
The new interpretation is based on a clause in the Act that prohibits use of a “wire communication facility for the transmission in interstate or foreign commerce of bets or wagers or information assisting in the placing of bets or wagers on any sporting event or contest…” The question is, does the phrase “on any sporting event or contest” circumscribe the application of the phrase “bets or wagers” or is it an addition on top of the general prohibition of all bets and wagers?
Well, I’ll put my yeshiva (religious law school) hat back on for a second and shteig (Yiddish for “learn”). If all bets and wagers are prohibited by the 1961 Wire Act, then “sporting event or contest” does not apply to the whole sentence. If so, then “sporting event or contest” must be strictly illustrative. However, if it is merely illustrative, then the authors should have included the phrase “for example” or something similar. But they didn’t. Further, if the purpose of the Act was to outlaw all bets or wagers, there is no reason to include the phrase “sporting event or contest” at all. Therefore the phrase “sporting event or contest” must be a limiting phrase rather than illustrative, meaning only bets or wagers made on sporting events or contests apply here.