California Assembly Bill 167 removed from hearing

Californian online gambling supporters experienced a setback in their quest to legalize online poker early this month as a critical bill, Assembly Bill 167, was removed from a scheduled hearing on Wednesday, January 11th. AB 167 would pave the way for online gambling, especially in the forms of horse racing and competitive poker, to become legal in California. This would make California the fourth state to legalize online poker for actual money after Nevada, New Jersey, and Delaware, while betting on horse races is already legal in a multitude of states.

Naturally, the most vehemently vocal opposition to AB 167 are tribal operators of existing casinos. In an open letter last March, a group of prominent casino-owning tribes publicly stated: “Our Tribal Governments have invested many hundreds of millions of dollars in brick-and-mortar operations that create tens of thousands of jobs for Californians. We did so in reliance on the rights granted by the people of California and the compacts we have negotiated with the State in the exercise of those rights. Legislation like AB 167 – which could threaten these rights, these substantial investments, and so bitterly divide California Tribes – should not move forward solely for the sake of supporting a business model that might possibly benefit a few tribes in the short term, to the certain and permanent detriment of all other tribes, not to mention, the citizens of California”.

The legal case that some tribes make against AB 167 is not, however, economic, but moral. They would like AB 167 to include a “bad actor” clause which would diminish the capacity of, or outright exclude, gambling organizations with a recent history of breach of US law. This clause seems to target the company PokerStars, which in recent history of settled with the US government for over $700 million. PokerStars also serves more than two thirds of the world’s online poker players making it a key player to be advantaged by the legalization of online gambling in California.