Public Policy Manager Richard Pinsky expects the 2021 gaming compact reached by the Florida state legislature and the Seminole Tribe of Florida to add an unexpected wrinkle to the state’s 2022 budget plan, as he told Law360. The agreement was expected to bring in at least $2.5 billion in revenue over the next five years and was viewed as one of the legislature and governor’s biggest achievements of the previous year, but the D.C. Circuit blocked the compact in its entirety after finding a provision that allows mobile sports betting, violating federal law by authorizing gambling outside Native American lands. Deciding how to proceed will drain precious time in the budgeting session.
“Do they wait around for court cases and appeals of those cases and appeals of rulings upon rulings, or do the folks in the Legislature – really the governor and the tribe, I suppose it starts there – cut their losses and say, ‘Let’s redo this until we resolve it at a federal level?” Pinsky said.