Missouri gambling machine regulations result in lawsuit

A new lawsuit in Missouri urges legislators to refine state regulations about electronic gambling machines.The lawsuit is filed by a special interest group called the Missouri Licensing Advocacy Group (MOLAG).

The legal action names Mark S. James, the Director of the Missouri Department of Public Safety, Catherine L. Hanaway, the Attorney General of Missouri, Christin H. Templeton, the Acting State Supervisor and Chief Enforcement of the Division of Alcohol and Tobacco Control, along with the State of Missouri as defendants.

The legal action challenges oversight of entertainment machines

In its lawsuit, the group describes that Missouri businesses such as stores, bars, restaurants, and other retail outlets, have offered entertainment and amusement devices.

Such gaming devices, like pinball, crane and claw machines, pool tables, arcade cabinets, and other coin-operatedmachines, have offered entertainment options to customers across the state.

However, MOLAG wrote, that with the advancement of technology, many of those machines have gone through upgrades, which subsequently caused a legal issue about their likeness to gambling machines.

"Superficial similarity does not answer the legal question. The legal question depends on statute, facts, device function, software, player-facing operation, actual use, and lawful adjudication," the group wrote in its lawsuit.

"If the State’s position is that every machine with an electronic screen, customer payment, amusement value, and possible prize is automatically an illegal gambling device, then the State’s theory sweeps far beyond the machines now being targeted. It raises obvious questions about common redemption and amusement models, including family-entertainment venues, pizza-party arcades, claw machines, ticket games, crane games, promotional games, and similar devices that ordinary Missourians have never understood to be felony gambling," MOLAG wrote.

The group further explained it doesn’t argue that every entertainment device in Missouri is lawful, nor asks the Court to "immunize unlawful gambling."

MOLAG outlined that amid ongoing legal scrutiny, businesses are asked to "choose among several bad options," which include removing of gaming devices that have generated revenue for years, leaving the machines with risk of facing criminal prosecution, renew their licenses with risk due to the machines, or accept an interpretation of the existing regulations that no Court in Missouri has approved regarding specific machines.

In this context, MOLAG asked the Court to draw the line between "investigation and adjudication, between agency interpretation and binding law, between licensing administration and criminal-law punishment, and between legislative choice and executive announcement."

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