Twenty-five card rooms in California have expressed their support for intrastate online poker legalization and regulation. They have jointly written to the state’s lawmakers, in which they have clarified their stand regarding several contested issues that may be discussed in the weeks to follow.
The card rooms decided to make their stand clear after 13 influential Native Indian tribes of California announced last month that they had agreed on the language of an online poker bill. Speaking about these developments, David Fried, an attorney, said,
I think it’s pretty impressive that 13 Indian tribes are all on the same page with legislation, and now you’ve got 25 card rooms also putting out what their position is. That in and of itself raises the possibility that legislation will move, and in August there will probably be amendments made to the legislation to address people’s concerns.
The card rooms addressed their letter to Reggie Jones-Sawyer, the assemblyman, and Lou Correa, the state senator, who had introduced the online poker bills. Besides expressing strong support for Internet poker legalization, their letter demanded the inclusion of a bad actor clause and permission for card rooms to participate in a legalized online poker market as they please.
California’s current online poker bills have bad actor clauses, but whether they should have such clauses is a hotly debated issue. The state’s legislative session will come to an end on August 31. Isadore Hall, the chairman of the committee on governmental organizations, which scheduled an online poker hearing last April, said that no more Internet poker hearings have been scheduled for the near future.
California’s three major poker card rooms —The Bike, The Commerce, and the Hawaiian Gardens— have not joined the above-mentioned coalition of 25 poker rooms just as The Morongo Band of Mission Indians did not join the coalition of 13 tribes. These card rooms have signed a deal with PokerStars and do not want the world’s biggest online poker room to be excluded from California’s online poker market.
Those demanding a bad actor clause in California’s online poker bill have remained unmoved by the news that PokerStars has been acquired by Amaya Gaming. According to Fried, it is the legislature, and not the regulatory bodies, who must decide bad actor clauses as companies ought to know the various definitions and rules of bad actors before deciding to part with up to $20 million for an online gaming license.
