Assembly Majority Leader Tyler August expressed confidence that legislation to allow online bets to be placed in Wisconsin will get at least 50 GOP votes on the floor next week despite pushback in some conservative circles.
Current law only allows gaming in Wisconsin on tribal lands. AB 601 would allow online bets so long as they went through servers on tribal lands. The bill is based on a “hub and spoke system” used in Florida that has been upheld by the federal courts.
The Assembly State Affairs Committee Wednesday signed off on the bill 10-0. Meanwhile, a Senate committee voted 5-3 last week to advance the bill with GOP Sens. Rachael Cabral-Guevara, of Appleton, and André Jacque, of New Franken, among those voting no. Unless at least one changes their mind, that would leave the Senate short of 17 GOP votes for the bill; leadership often prefers to pass legislation without requiring votes from the minority party.
August, the lead Assembly co-author of the legislation, spoke with WisPolitics yesterday after the Rules Committee finalized Wednesday’s calendar with AB 601.
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August said it was an easy pitch to get his colleagues on board.
“I gave up trying to guess what’s going to happen in the Senate a long time ago,” August said. “People seem to understand this is what people want, and this is the only legal way to do it.”
The Forest County Potawatomi Community, Ho-Chunk Nation, Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce and the Milwaukee Brewers are among those who have registered in favor of the bill. Meanwhile, Wisconsin Family Action Inc. and the Sports Betting Alliance, which includes online gaming platforms such as DraftKings and FanDuel, have registered in opposition to the bill.
Some conservative talk radio hosts have posted on social media against this bill in recent days, while the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty released an analysis of the legislation this week. The conservative group argued the legislation is unlawful and “an end-run around federal law and the state constitution, expanding and exposing an already broken, illegal statewide gambling system.”
Among other things, the memo argues the legislation would violate the federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act by “unleashing tribal betting monopolies off reservation” and the right of equality in the Fourteenth Amendment “by handing a race-based monopoly to Tribal gaming operations while closing the door on everyone else.”
August said other attorneys believe the proposal would pass legal scrutiny.
