Despite a U.S. Supreme Court decision, Idaho’s ban on sports betting is unlikely to change anytime soon.
In fact, Idaho would have to amend its Constitution to allow betting on any sports but horse racing.
“To me, it’s so uphill that I haven’t even heard a whisper of a proponent,” said Brian Kane, Idaho assistant chief deputy attorney general. “The Constitution is very clear.”
In May 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that sports betting is a states’ rights issue after New Jersey challenged its right to amend its laws to allow sports betting.
While many states have since allowed betting on sports, Kane says don’t count on Idaho amending its Constitution.
Idaho’s sports betting laws don’t just prevent would-be bettors from gambling locally, but they are also barred from taking part in online betting through services such as FanDuel and DraftKings.
In 2016, the Idaho attorney general reached an agreement with both FanDuel and DraftKings in which the companies agreed to clear all accounts connected with an Idaho address.
“The concern I have is that the paid daily sports offerings provided by these companies constitute gambling under Idaho law,” Attorney General Lawrence Wasden wrote in an opinion in May 2016. “I have a duty to enforce and uphold that law. I commend the companies for negotiating in good faith and agreeing not to make these contests available in Idaho.”
Kane recently told the Idaho Press, “You’re actually seeing the states that are doing it, I don’t want to say they were predisposed to gambling, but they had a much more favorable regulatory regime to amend.”
Idaho’s Constitution allows for three types of gambling: a state lottery, charitable raffles and pari-mutuel gambling, which pits bettors against each other rather than against the house. Pari-mutuel betting includes horse racing, but does not specifically allow for the historical horse race machines involved in Proposition 1, which failed to gain a majority of votes Nov. 6.
Tribal casinos are allowed in Idaho, but they are limited in scope and options for gambling, Kane said.
“We also have a couple of specific statutes that prohibit it,” he said.
The failed initiative to allow machines at horse race tracks was indicative to Kane that Idahoans are fine without gambling.
Additionally, Idaho is surrounded by a number of states that do allow sports betting and other forms of gambling, which may allow some Idahoans to satiate their gambling desires without having it at home.
“It could very well be that folks think, ‘I’m OK with going to Nevada, but I don’t necessarily want to bring it into my backyard,’” Kane said.
Enforcement is up to each county’s sheriff, Kane said.
Ada County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Patrick Orr said the office does not have any active investigations into any illegal gambling operations.
“The way we would treat a report of illegal gambling would be like we treat any other report of a potential crime — whether it be vandalism or fraud or theft or anything else,” Orr wrote in an email to the Idaho Press. “We would investigate whatever the report was about, compile evidence if there was evidence to compile, and send that to the Ada County Prosecutor’s Office, which would determine if a crime occurred, and if so, who to charge with what.”