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Third Circuit Upholds Online Gambling Ban

By Shannon P. Duffy

Internet gambling proponents suffered a major setback when a federal appeals court refused to strike down a 2006 law in which Congress banned all Internet gambling transactions that would be illegal in the gambler's state. In Interactive Media Entertainment & Gaming Association v. Attorney General of the United States, 08-1981, a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit rejected arguments that the law should be declared void for vagueness. Writing for the court, U.S. Circuit Judge Dolores K. Sloviter found that the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (UIGEA) “clearly provides a person of ordinary intelligence with adequate notice of the conduct that it prohibits.”

Lawyers for the gaming interests focused on the statute's use of the phrase “unlawful Internet gambling,” which, they argued, lacks any “ascertainable and workable definition.” But Sloviter found that a plaintiff who raises a facial challenge to a statute on vagueness grounds “must demonstrate that the law is impermissibly vague in all of its applications.” With that test in mind, Sloviter found that the UIGEA “cannot be deemed impermissibly vague in all its applications” because several states prohibit all gambling activity or specifically ban Internet gambling.

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