West Flagler has requested the US Supreme Court grant it an extension in filing its formal petition to review its case.
The news is the latest twist in an ongoing legal dispute around the launch of online sports betting in Florida through the Seminole Tribe’s compact with the state.
The agreement grants the tribe the exclusive rights to offer online sports betting statewide through a “hub-and-spoke” model.
This approach sees off-reservation bets routed through tribal servers, and is designed as a workaround to the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act’s ban on tribal gaming taking place outside Indian land.
The two Florida parimutuel betting operators challenging the compact, West Flagler Associates and the Bonita-Fort Myers Corporation, asked the court to give them until 9 February 2024 to file a Writ of Certiorari.
This is a formal request for the SCOTUS to review a lower court’s decision. In this case that is the opinion issued by the DC Circuit of Appeals that confirmed the compact from federal objections.
At present the plaintiffs have an 11 December deadline to file their petition.
West Flagler said the reason for the requested extension is due to a separately filed challenge to the compact making its way through the Florida Supreme Court.
The operator said that if the state court rules in its favour, then it will “impact the scope” of the SCOTUS petition.
“But if the Florida Supreme Court denies or fails to rule in applicant’s favour, the important statutory and constitutional issues raised by the circuit opinion would certainly remain,” it added.
West Flagler highlights equal protections argument
In October, the Supreme Court rejected a request by West Flagler to order a stay on the Seminoles’ launch of online sports betting until the court had ruled on its Writ of Certiorari petition.
Despite rejecting the motion, in the court’s opinion Justice Kavanaugh said the compact raised “serious equal protection issues”.
As such, West Flagler has argued in its request for an extension that these issues still exist even if the state court rejects its petition.
In the DC Circuit case, the operator had argued that the granting of an effective sports betting monopoly to a single ethnic group represented a violation of the 14th Amendment’s equal protections clause.
However, the court dismissed the argument, stating that “promoting the economic development of federally recognised tribes” did not violate the constitution.
“Since there is a possibility that applicants’ petition for certiorari could be significantly informed by the decision of the Florida Supreme Court on the state petition, applicants respectfully ask this court to extend the time for applicants to file such a petition,” concluded the operator in its latest petition.
Florida rejects sports betting stay
However, while West Flagler pins its hopes on the state case, recent news from that front has dampened hopes the operator will prove victorious.
The request for an extension comes just days after the Florida Supreme Court rejected its petition to order a stay on the Seminole’s sports betting launch.
West Flagler had filed its petition in reaction to the Seminoles’ surprise Hard Rock Bet limited launch earlier in the month.
Now that both the federal and state courts have rejected West Flagler’s requests to halt the Hard Rock launch, its only hope is to win the cases outright.
