A Waukesha County Circuit Court judge has set April 20, 2027, for oral arguments in the challenge to Wisconsin’s new framework for statewide mobile sports betting, with a decision expected in May if the case remains in state court. Judge J. Arthur Melvin set the timetable at a Nov. 9 hearing; briefing by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, the state and tribal intervenors is due to begin in February.
The case was filed on Aug. 5 by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, representing the Brown County Taxpayers Association and Citizens Defending Liberty, against Gov. Tony Evers and members of his administration. The plaintiffs want the court to declare Act 247 unconstitutional and bar the administration from authorizing or administering mobile sports wagering, including through negotiations over tribal gaming compacts.
As reported in October, eight Wisconsin tribal nations had sought dismissal of the lawsuit after intervening to defend the law. They are the Bad River Ojibwe, Forest County Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Oneida, Red Cliff Ojibwe, Mole Lake Ojibwe and Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican nations.
The dispute concerns the legal location of a mobile bet. Act 247 excludes wagers placed through a mobile or electronic device from the state’s definition of a bet when the processing service or device is located on Wisconsin tribal land and complies with a gaming compact. The resulting hub-and-spoke model places the server on tribal land while allowing users elsewhere in Wisconsin to place wagers.
Before the law, sports betting was permitted at tribal casinos but not through a casino app used from elsewhere in the state. Wisconsin’s constitution generally prohibits gambling except on sovereign tribal land, and WILL argues the new framework evades the 1993 constitutional amendment barring new gambling.
The lawsuit also argues that assigning the ability to operate betting businesses to tribes violates state and federal constitutional protections, including the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal-protection guarantee. Its complaint contends that the act grants a benefit based ultimately on race.
WILL attorney Lucas Vebber said the organisation plans to amend the complaint following the Nov. 3 passage of a state constitutional amendment barring governments and schools from race-based discrimination or preferential treatment through affirmative-action or diversity, equity and inclusion programmes.
The tribes’ online operations would require renegotiated gaming compacts with the state. The Wisconsin Department of Administration says all 11 federally recognised tribes have compacts authorised under the federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988, and the compacts establish the rules, regulations and conditions for Class III gaming. Any amendment requires agreement by the governor and tribe, followed by approval from the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs.
The plaintiffs contend that the governor cannot negotiate compact changes that permit conduct prohibited by Wisconsin law. A legal analysis commissioned by the Forest County Potawatomi Community reached the opposite conclusion. Ryan Walsh, a former state chief deputy solicitor general, concluded that the bill and associated compacts should survive constitutional and federal-law challenges, arguing that the Legislature may determine where a bet occurs and that only an approved compact, rather than the bill itself, authorises gambling.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s 2006 Dairyland Greyhound Park Inc. v. Doyle decision protected tribes’ ability to renegotiate gaming compacts with the governor. Recent amendments negotiated with Evers allowed the Oneida Nation, Forest County Potawatomi and Ho-Chunk Nation to offer on-site sports betting.
Melvin, who previously served as division administrator for the Wisconsin Division of Gaming under former Gov. Scott Walker, reviewed whether his former position created a conflict and concluded it did not. No party objected to his continuing on the case.
