Indian gaming operations daily. 3 The regulatory system established under IGRA vests local tribal government regulators with the primary day-to-day responsibility for regulating Indian gaming operations. No one has a greater interest in protecting the integrity of Indian gaming and our assets than tribal governments. While tribes take on the primary day-to-day role of regulating Indian gaming operations, IGRA requires coordination and cooperation with the federal and state governments to make this comprehensive regulatory system work. Our comprehensive regulatory system ensures consumer protection, fraud prevention, and local decision-making to address social implications like problem and underage gaming. At the federal level, tribes work with the NIGC, the FBI and U.S. Attorneys offices to investigate and prosecute anyone who would cheat, embezzle, or defraud an Indian gaming facility – this applies to management, employees, and patrons. 18 U.S.C. §1163. Tribal regulators also work with the Treasury Department’s Internal Revenues Service to ensure federal tax compliance and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) to prevent money laundering. This comprehensive multi-layered system of regulation is costly and time consuming, but it has proven its worth year after year. The credit for this system goes to the tribal leaders who make the decisions to fund this system and to the thousands of men and women who have devoted their lives to protecting tribal assets and the integrity of our operations. Gambling through the CFTC Violates Tribal, State, and Federal Laws Sports betting that is being conducted through prediction markets – Designated Contract Markets (“DCM”) licensed by the CFTC – violates tribal, federal, and state laws, including the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, which expressly provides tribal governments with exclusive authority to regulate gaming on Indian lands in partnership with states and the NIGC. Background: Sports Betting in the United States Historically, gambling in the United States has been subject to the local decision making of tribal and state governments. Where they chose to legalize the activity, states and tribes establish gaming commissions and control boards to oversee the industry and enforce local laws and regulations. Gambling on the outcomes of sporting events has a more complicated and relatively recent history. In 1992, Congress sought to prohibit all forms of sports betting in the United States through enactment of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (“PASPA”). While several state governments were exempted from the nationwide prohibition, gambling on sporting events was generally prohibited at the federal level for more than 25 years. In May of 2018, the United States Supreme Court, in Murphy v. NCAA , struck down PASPA as violating the Tenth Amendment’s anti-commandeering doctrine. Murphy returned oversight of sports betting to local tribal and state government policy makers. In the eight years since the Murphy decision, sports betting has grown slowly on a tribe-by-tribe and state-by-state basis. In the more than seven years since Murphy , a number of states chose to continue the prohibition against sports betting for religious, moral, and other reasons. Two states, Utah and Hawaii, criminally prohibit nearly all forms of gambling within their jurisdictions. Nine other states –
3 NIGC Budget Justifications and Performance Indication FY2025 at NIGC-1; https://www.doi.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2024-03/fy2025-508-nigc-greenbook.pdf.
4
Made with FlippingBook - Online catalogs