Kentucky Supreme Court Faces Online Gambling
November 13, 2009
The state of Kentucky is back in the news for their stance on online gambling. They came to the country’s attention when they tried to seize more than 140 online gambling domain names claiming that if they were operating in Kentucky that they were breaking the law and that they had jurisdiction over those sites. As they allow gambling already within their state, many cried foul and said that they were simply trying to maintain a monopoly within their state and asked the courts to intervene on their behalf.
The state is now claiming that the online gambling sites are the same as an actual slot machine device and they claim the right to be able to seize any illegal gambling device within their borders. This is their second attempt at getting the online gambling domain names as an appellate court has already denied them the right to seize them.
But the state of Kentucky says that the online gambling sites are “using [the sites] to violate the law in Kentucky” and is hoping the courts will side with them this time around. They are asking for either the seizure of the online gambling names or to force those sites to ban residents of Kentucky from being able to participate in online gambling there. They argue that with online gambling already being illegal in the United States that they have the right to stop them from targeting their residents.
The online gambling sites argue that online gambling is not illegal in the state of Kentucky because they have not made gambling illegal in their state. They say that they allow horse and dog racing, as well as a lottery, so they are already condoning gambling within their state. They also say that as the state does not have jurisdiction over offshore sites – which all of these are – they do not have the right to seize them nor to tell them how to do their business. They argued that the state is “improperly [mixing] civil and criminal maneuvers in the case.”
