Hearing Date Set for IMEGA Suit Against US Online Gambling Ban
The US Third Circuit Court of Appeals announced today that oral presentations in the case of the iMEGA challenge to the UIGEA will be heard July 7th in Philadelphia. The case pits the Interactive Media Entertainment and Gaming Association and its attorneys against lawyers representing the US Department of Justice, who will defend the online gambling ban.
The gaming organization is contending the UIGEA should be voided for vagueness. Since the suit was originally filed, several examples of the problematic nature of the law have developed, including the blocking of state lottery online payments. The DoJ is vigorously fighting the introduction of the new evidence, which would seem severely harmful to its case.
Three judges will hear the suit. Judge Dolores Korman Sloviter, Judge Thomas L. Ambro, and Judge Kent A. Jordan will compose the judiciary panel.
Eric Bernstein and former US Deputy Attorney General Stephen Saltzburg represent iMEGA, while the DoJ will send Nicholas J. Bagley and Jacqueline Coleman to represent itself, the Federal Reserve, and the Federal Trade Commission.
“We feel very confident that when the judges take a look at the law, they will see just how defective it is, and they will overturn it,” said iMEGA chairman Joe Brennan, Jr.
Brennan asserted that the law has survived so far through political maneuvering, and would now be examined impartially for its validity and Constitutionality.
