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Can You Play Real Money Online Casinos In The USA? 
 
 
The internal war inside the United States of America between the choice of free people to do what they like with their own money and the anti-gambling bible wielding conservatives can appear very confusing to anyone looking in, especially if you live in the UK where there is virtually unlimited access to digital gambling products.

At first glance it might make some sense for god fearing people to worry about the spread of the vice of gambling but they don't seem to raise their voice when it comes to going to war with any country that is different from them, or the peculiar nonsensical right to bear arms in a liberal democracy. However god has nothing to do with it, its just a power battle that is made more complicated by the additional conflict of the federal government trying to impose laws on states that believe their governance is their own. That is further complicated by individual state departments trying to enforce their own interpretation of different federal laws in a constant to and fro of court rulings. No one basically knows where they are in terms of the rule of law, or even which law applies.

The Wire Act

What is known is that you can play for regular dollars in US real money casinos that are completely legal right at this moment and it would take a giant step from the Department Of Justice to enforce their November 2019 published opinion that The Federal Wire Act (1961) applies to all gambling and not just sports betting. The reason they can't enforce their opinion is that a U.S District Court Judge made a judgement in June 2019 that the Justice Department's opinion was invalid. They intern have lodged an appeal in the First Court Of Appeals, the name of which tells you this could go higher and run on for a long time.

However the Wire Act is really called the Interstate Wire Act and specifically talks about telecommunications across state lines, or country borders, for the purpose of betting. So as long as you are gambling online with a facility that is based in the state you are living in, then it is completely legal and therefore no Fed department can intervene. This of course is simple when it comes to playing casino games because they are digitally created by servers and reside in the state where you live, if you do live in the U.S.A.. The problem comes when the casino operator wants to offer you sports betting like every other casino around the world. This is because here there was another law to get in everyone's way, the Bradley Act of 1992.

PAPSA

The Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act 1992 (known as PAPSA or Bradley Act) set out to outlaw sports betting across all states with some notable exceptions of the state of Nevada and the country wide parimutuel betting on horses and greyhounds. Unfortunately for sports bettors the individual state legislatures did not react to combat this for 20 years and so legal sports betting was almost non-existent across the country.

The state of New Jersey got active in 2012 with its Sports Wagering Act and betting on sports could once again take place in its casino and at its racetracks. It wasn't until 2018 that online sports betting started when DraftKings went online with a sportsbook. Now there are more than a dozen websites and apps taking bets in NJ some of which are run by the big UK firms.

States with legal Online Casinos

Currently there are only 4 U.S. States that have taken the opportunity to pass online gambling laws and allow casinos. They are New Jersey (the leader in the fight for online gambling), Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Delaware. However Delaware does not allow sports betting but a further 8 states do. They are Indiana, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island, Montana and Colorado.

More states are soon to come online as they have passed the necessary laws. Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia will all be launching sports betting but as yet no online casinos. Many more states are moving towards online sports betting but casinos are moving at a much slower pace although many of the leaders of the new breed of online casinos in North America are the First Nations group and the Indian Reservations.
 
 
 

 
 
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