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Joe Biden Supports 2011 Wire Act Opinion

Joe Biden is one of the frontrunners for the US Democratic Presidential nomination for 2020. The former Vice-President is looking to make current President Donald Trump a one-termer and to reunite the nation as a whole.

One thing that Biden is also looking to do is to roll back the DOJ’s interpretation of the Federal Wire Act. According to recent reports, Biden’s administration would ignore the January 2019 opinion regarding the Wire Act and work with the 2011 opinion.

Biden Opposes Unnecessary Restrictions on Online Gambling

According to various reports, including one by CDC Gaming Reports, Presidential hopeful Joe Biden and his administration would operate under the 2011 interpretation of the Federal Wire Act. In that opinion, only sports betting would be impacted by the Wire Act.

As a result of that opinion, numerous states have examined legalizing online gambling and online poker. Nevada, Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia have all regulated online poker and all of those states except Nevada have regulated generalized online gambling.

According to Biden, he doesn’t support what he calls “unnecessary restrictions to the gaming industry” similar to those imposed by the Trump Administration. As you may already know, the DOJ filed a new Wire Act memo earlier this year and that memo applied to online gambling as a whole.

New Hampshire filed a lawsuit regarding the interpretation and won. A federal judge ruled that the Wire Act only applied to sports betting, and not generalized gambling. The DOJ is presently in the midst of appealing that ruling.

How Would Biden Roll Back the DOJ Opinion?

Biden did not give details about the vehicle he would use to change the DOJ policy, but he has multiple options. The first would be to sign an Executive Order similar to those overused by President Trump. US Presidents have historically used the Executive Order to enact policy changes, but such a drastic measure will likely not be necessary.

The simplest option for Biden would be to put in a new US Attorney General that shares his vision and have him enact the new policy. The AG would instruct his subordinates to draft a new opinion or simply to file a brief to state that the DOJ would revert back to the 2011 Wire Act opinion.

Federal Regulation Will Still Be a Better Option

While reverting back to the 2011 Wire Act opinion would be a favorable option for states looking to move forward with online gambling, it is just a short-term stopgap. The reality is that policy with the DOJ can change based on the whims of the current administration. Even if Biden is successful in getting into office in 2020, what happens in 2024 or 2028 when there’s a new President?

The best option has been and still remains, a federal-level online gambling bill. Such a bill would not just regulate online poker at the federal level, but would also all the legalization of generalized online gambling. This would include the legalization of online slots, table games, lottery, sports betting, and other forms of gambling.

One problem with such a measure is getting it through Congress. Presently, such a measure would likely pass the House but then fail in the Senate. Even if it somehow managed to make it to President Trump, he would likely veto it.

For online gambling to have a real show of being regulated at the federal level, we would need the perfect storm of a Democratic-controlled Congress and a Democratic President in the White House. Such a scenario presently seems unlikely to happen in 2020. As such, the best option may be for Biden to take the White House and then have the DOJ revert back to the 2011 Wire Act memo.

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