A landmark Supreme Court ruling in 2018 changed the way the USA looks at sports betting, and you may have seen the results in town centers and local media since then. Or, depending on where you live, you also may not have seen any such thing. The ruling, you see, did not so much legalize betting across the States, as leave it up to the states to decide. This is something that they have been doing since there, with some working faster than others to regulate betting and build up infrastructure online and in brick-and-mortar buildings.

As is the case in so many other areas of the law, this has led to interesting disparities between neighboring states, and to peculiarities of betting law itself. When someone in California goes to casinogenie.org, for example, they will see a range of sites where they can play roulette, slots machines, baccarat and all the other well-known casino stalwarts. If someone in neighboring Nevada tries the same, they might see the same sites, but they won’t be able to play there. Although the state is almost synonymous with casino glitz, online betting is not permitted there.

The dominoes fall one by one…

As of this moment, only one state in the union is firmly set against ever permitting sports betting. That’s Utah, which not only hasn’t reacted to the Supreme Court ruling with legislation of its own; it has existing legislation firmly prohibiting betting at all. Given the founding principles of the state, it’s hard to see that changing. There is neither broad public support for doing so nor a serious political groundswell behind even trying.  Wisconsin and Idaho have no such existing legislation, but also are putting no effort into implementing legislation to allow betting.

Elsewhere, though, the race has been joined by the vast majority of US states, but at different paces that have ranged from breakneck to sedate. New Jersey, the state that brought the case before the Supreme Court, was almost immediate in its adoption of a law that was already written and supported in the state congress. Nearby New York, for its part, has also been speedy to embrace sports betting, and is looking into ways to further relax its already liberal betting laws.

Some slower than others

Maine lawmakers passed a bill in the final congressional session of 2019 that agreed to the safe and careful legalization of sports betting. The bill was then passed to the state governor, who torpedoed it. Lawmakers went away and worked on the bill, and in May of this year, in concert with the state’s native tribal leaders, produced a bill that met with gubernatorial approval. This is a helpful illustration of what has been going on in states since the 2018 ruling. Some states have passed new rules with little resistance. Others have no plans to do so. Others still are dead against it, but many - like Maine - are finding the balance that allows them to permit some form of betting in some circumstances.

Depending on where you look, you could be forgiven for assuming that Hawaii and Utah were in the same basket, as many sources insist that the Aloha State is fully set against ever permitting sports betting. However, while the state initially responded to the Supreme Court ruling by introducing legislation to stop gambling from taking place there, state legislators have looked at ways to pass bills which would relax their existing ordinance. Such efforts have so far been unsuccessful, but the effort would not be made were there not at least a rump in support of it.

Overall, a complicated picture

There is no particular pattern between those states which have already legalized sports betting and those which have not or will not. States seen as more liberal, including New York and California, were early adopters - but so too was highly conservative Mississippi. Larger states are among the first ones to regulate the industry and make moves on sports betting, as in Florida, but the largest states in the Union - Alaska and Texas, have not while tiny West Virginia has. All in all, four years on from its federal legalization, the state of sports betting in America remains a confusing picture.