Home / Poker News August 2014 / Online Poker Legalization Setback: Both California Bills are Dead
Online Poker Legalization Setback: Both California Bills are Dead
Posted by: James Carter. - Tue, 2014-08-19 03:54
The legalization and regulation of online poker has never been a task that anybody ever thought an easy one to accomplish on any level. US lawmakers have repeatedly failed to get something going on the federal level and since about two years ago, all such efforts have been focused on the state-by-state solution. Apparently though, state-by-state legalization isn’t going smoothly either, despite the optimistic predictions of some of the specialists who thought that after Nevada and New Jersey, state-level regulation would gain a lot of momentum.
In a clear illustration of the difficulties facing this approach, both bills aimed at
online poker legalization and regulation in the Golden State have been shelved over the last couple of weeks, meaning that we will not see any progress in this respect this year.
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One of the two bills mentioned above is that of Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer, who said his bill had no chances to pass this year. He wowed to fight on though, promising to re-introduce the bill during December’s legislative session.
While the Jones-Sawyer bill may live to fight another day, Sen. Lou Correa’s much-hyped legal initiative is pretty much dead and buried. Correa will apparently not be able to reintroduce his bill the way Reggie Jones-Sawyer will, because he won’t be back next year as his term-limit is up.
Why did the bills falter this year though? Apparently, in their proposed form, they were simply unacceptable for some of the interests represented in the State Senate/Assembly, and there was just not enough time to amend them to be agreeable to all those concerned.
Horse racing tracks exerted their share of pressure and the bad actors clause (the one which would essentially ban sites like PokerStars from the market) turned out to be a major obstacle as well.
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