US Online Gambling Law

Following the passing of the UIGEA and several major news networks claiming that online gambling in the US is illegal has fueled the question: Is online gambling legal in the United States? The answer is yes, online gambling is legal under US federal law; however, each state is free to prohibit or regulate it as they see fit. While you should check up on your state gambling laws to make sure there's no specific ruling against it, online gambling has no federal legal ramification.

While it's still legal under federal law, there were some restrictions placed upon it, though these have no effect on the player. In 2003, the island of Antigua, where many Internet gambling providers are based, sued the United States via the World Trade Organization (WTO) court regarding their ban on gambling ads. It claimed that these US laws were in violation of free trade agreements. At the end of 2004, Antigua won their WTO case against the US. The US appealed this ruling and ultimately lost. Despite this, the US still refused to acknowledge the ruling of either the lawsuit or the appeal, and they continued to ban gambling ads.

The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) was introduced under President George W. Bush in October 2006 as part of the SAFE Port Act. This Act did not prohibit online gambling itself, but rather it attempted to prohibit financial transactions to online gambling service providers. Individual gamblers based in the US can still place real-money bets online with absolutely no fear of violating federal law, although in rare cases it may be prohibited by state law. What the UIGEA established is that it's illegal is to operate an online casino that is based in the US (i.e. to take bets on US soil). The result of UIGEA was that many offshore online gambling providers shut down their services to US residents for fear of being targeted or sought-out by US lawmakers.

The Wire Act outlaws making bets over the telephone and there are those who claim that this applies to the Internet as well. However, this has never been ruled on in a US court and as such remains a bit of a grey area. Unauthorized forms of Internet gambling are prohibited in the states of Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Nevada, Oregon, South Dakota and Washington at the time of this writing. In the states of Hawaii and Utah, all types (online or off) of gambling are illegal.

There is also a specific debate over US poker sites and their legality. A group called the Interactive Media Entertainment and Gaming Association (iMEGA) is fighting the UIGEA Act. In addition, representatives Barney Frank and Ron Paul introduced a bill to legalize and regulate Internet gambling. Unfortunately, this bill failed to make it out of the House Financial Services Committee. There has also recently been much debate over the clarity of UIGEA in an attempt to define the term "Unlawful Internet Gambling", though this hasn't made much real progress as of yet.

To summarize the legal status of online gambling, it is not illegal for a US resident to gamble on the Internet - the laws are meant to effect the casino operators and the payment processors who allow payments to be made. It is therefore necessary to find a casino that will accept US players which uses an online payment method that is legal for US-based players to use in order to fund their accounts. While this has become more difficult, the casinos determined to provide their services to the US market have found legal ways to allow players to easily fund their gambling accounts. Our top 5 casinos accepting US players all have safe, legal methods to allow the player to deposit money quickly and easily.