Eight Wisconsin tribal nations have asked Waukesha County Circuit Court to dismiss a challenge to the state’s new route to online sports betting, arguing that federally recognized tribes are immune from suits in local county court. Their Oct. 14 filing seeks dismissal with prejudice and asks that the plaintiffs pay the tribes’ legal costs.
The case concerns 2025 Wisconsin Act 247, which created a path for tribal online sports wagering across the state if the computer servers running the betting apps are on tribal land. The law does not mean statewide mobile betting has begun. Ho-Chunk Nation President Jon Greendeer said substantial details still had to be resolved before it could become a reality.
The Wisconsin Legislature gave final approval to the measure in March, after the Assembly passed it by voice vote in February and the Senate backed it with 12 Democrats and nine Republicans. Previously, sports bets could be placed only at certain tribal casinos, while online sports betting was illegal.
The lawsuit, Case No. 2026CV001390, was filed Aug. 5 by the Brown County Taxpayers Association and Citizens Defending Liberty. The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty is also involved in the challenge. It names Gov. Tony Evers and state gaming officials, alongside the eight tribes, and seeks declaratory and injunctive relief.
The complaint argues that Act 247 conflicts with the Wisconsin Constitution’s general bar on legislative authorization of gambling, which has exceptions for bingo and raffles, pari-mutuel on-track betting and the state lottery. It also characterizes the tribal-only framework as race-based discrimination under the Fourteenth Amendment, contends that compact amendments needed to implement it would exceed state authority, and argues that new enforcement infrastructure would amount to an unlawful use of public money.
The plaintiffs cited a Marquette University Law School poll in which 64% of respondents opposed legalizing online sports betting. The tribes reject the racial-discrimination premise, maintaining that their relationship with the government is based on treaties and government-to-government relationships grounded in tribal sovereignty rather than race.
The tribal defendants are Band River Ojibwe, Forest County Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Oneida, Red Cliff Ojibwe, Mole Lake Ojibwe and Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican. FOX 11 reported that their “response ran 36 pages”:https://fox11online.com/news/state/wisconsin-native-american-tribes-sports-betting-gambling-gaming-brown-county-taxpayers-association-lawsuit-response-dismissal; the Wisconsin Attorney General’s Office had already filed a defence of the law.
The dispute comes from Wisconsin’s long-established system of tribal gaming compacts. The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act provides tribes the exclusive right to regulate gaming on Indian lands when the activity is not prohibited by federal law and the state does not prohibit it as a matter of criminal law and public policy. Wisconsin’s tribal casinos began operating in the early 1990s, after federal litigation required the state to negotiate compacts.
Gaming revenue is central to the tribes’ argument over the stakes of the case. Tribal attorneys said tribes rely almost exclusively on it to finance health care, education and infrastructure because they lack a tax base. In 2024, Wisconsin tribes paid the state just over $66 million from casino revenue under their compacts.
Greendeer said it would be impractical for each of Wisconsin’s 11 federally recognized tribal nations to operate a separate betting app, and envisaged two or three jointly operated platforms. Lac du Flambeau Ojibwe President John Johnson said any system should be fair and should not leave the online market controlled by larger tribes such as Ho-Chunk and Potawatomi.
An online scheduling conference is set for Nov. 9.
