Research Brief: Wire Act New Hampshire Case Ruling
On the afternoon of June 4th, a ruling was issued by United States District Judge Paul Barbadoro in the case between the New Hampshire Lottery Commission and Neopollard, a lottery vendor, against the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) regarding the Interstate Wire Act of 1961. The suit was brought by New Hampshire in response to the memorandum issued by the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel (“OLC”) on November 2, 2018 (the “2018 Memo”), which stated that the Wire Act applied to all forms of gaming and not just sports betting, reversing a previous opinion issued in 2011 (the “2011 Memo”). The 60-page ruling in the New Hampshire case confirmed the 2011 Memo, stating that the Wire Act applies only to sports betting and setting aside the 2018 Memo. The result in the New Hampshire case represents a shot across the bow of the authors of the 2018 Memo and others, in the DOJ and elsewhere, who have pushed this agenda for the last several years.
The case was one that many throughout the gaming and lottery industries had been watching since the 2018 Memo was released earlier this year. After the 2018 Memo was released, the DOJ offered a 90-day window before enforcement of the Memo would go into effect, which meant that enforcement should have commenced on April 15, 2019. The DOJ extended that deadline another 60 days earlier this spring, pushing the end of the non-prosecution period to June 14, 2019.
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