Massachusetts House Denies Online Gambling Ban

Filed in archive Poker Laws on March 24, 2008

Score one for the good guys.

There has been a lot of chat about the petition to ban online gambling in the state of Massachusetts with a back-handed bill that would have allowed three resort type casinos to claim a new home while banning all forms of online gambling. Anyone remember the last attempt to curb online gambling with hidden provisions? Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act ring a bell?

Except this time the House members were well aware of the add-on, put there by none other then the Governor of Massachusetts himself. As a snide remark I'd offer someone's bad bluff at the poker tables, here's one for Deval Patrick:

Nice try sir.

Another great job by Pokernews.com's Amy Caslitri in summarizing the vote and showing how the online gambling ban may have turned the tide for the bill:

On Wednesday, the House Joint Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies voted 10-8 to reject the bill prior to sending it to the House floor. Without a vote of support from the committee, the bill would face an uphill battle in a full house vote. The narrow margin was a result of key abstention by Democratic Representative Robert L. Rice Jr. Prior to the committee vote, Rice had been considered a supporter of the bill by those lobbying in its behalf. To some extent they were correct; Rice does indeed support some type of casino gambling in the state. But for Rice, the devil in this particular bill was in the details and one of the details he was uncomfortable with was the provision to criminalize online gambling. "I didn't disagree with the concept; I disagreed with the specifics," said Rice. "I thought that by abstaining, it would give me flexibility to do what I'm doing." During the six hour debate on the House floor, Rice attempted to introduce an amendment that would remove the online gambling criminalization provision, but by that time, the momentum to defeat the bill in any form was already too strong.