Bill to ban online gambling in the USA introduced to the Senate

enator for Arkansas, Tom Cotton, has quietly filed a bill to the Senate seeking to ban online gambling in the country.

The bill, S.3376, was read twice before being referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, leaving it eligible both for debate and voting on its passage.

The US Congress website confirms that the bill aims “to ensure the integrity of laws enacted to prevent the use of financial instruments for funding or operating online casinos are not undermined by legal opinions not carrying the force of law issued by the federal government lawyers.”

The bill echoes recent, Sheldon Adelson backed attempts to reaffirm “the prohibition on funding of unlawful internet gambling.”

Senators including Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham filed the Restoration of America’s Wire Act to the Senate in June 2015, while Graham attempted to push such a measure through once more in May 2016, trying and failing to squeeze language reaffirming the Wire Act of 1961 into a Senate Appropriations funding bill.

These bills are all founded on the notion that the Obama administration overstepped its bounds in 2011, in issuing a Justice Department memo clarifying the government’s position that interstate gambling across “wire communications” that do not relate to sports betting fall outside the terms of the act.

The full text and ultimate scope of the bill is not yet known, given that Cotton has yet to file more than a title and place holding sentence with the Senate Judiciary Committee.