The Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas informed the Texas Senate that if it didn’t rein in the online sales of Texas Lottery tickets, the tribe would pursue full-blown casino gambling in the state.
Though the tribe omitted it from their correspondence, recent legal developments might mean these casinos won’t be housed on reservations; they might pockmark the entire state.
The letter, submitted to the Senate State Affairs Committee on October 9, highlighted that proliferating courier services are “operating contrary to the law and representing an expansion of gambling in the State.”
The Kickapoo are calling for a prohibition on the services’ operations.
As the tribe sees it, purchasing a lottery ticket online is simply placing a bet, and the drawing is an outcome of the bet. They call the current setup, in which an online player pays for a ticket from an app, a workaround for the state’s prohibition on internet gambling.
The tribe’s letter also noted that state law prohibits sales by a person who is not a sales agent or an employee of a sales agent. This is problematic for the Lottery Commission.
First, the commission has claimed in hearings that it does not sell tickets online; that’s done by another entity––in this case, couriers. As such, the commission claims that the courier services are outside of their jurisdiction.
Either the couriers are acting as sales agents, thereby violating the law, or sales agents are operating subject to the couriers and, therefore, fall under the commission’s purview since it issues licenses to the agents.
There is a key line in the letter that trips all of the warning bells—the suggestion by the Kickapoo that the lottery is serving as a random number generator to simulate real-time online games of chance. Translation: it’s acting like a slot machine.
And when it comes to slot machines––the bread and butter of casinos—the tribes are interested in triggering Class III status with the federal government to move beyond the bingo-type slot machines currently allowed into full-blown Vegas-style gambling.
Industry experts aren’t overly optimistic about the Texas Legislature legalizing casinos during the 2025 legislative session, but the Kickapoo Tribe may move forward without the state’s approval unless lawmakers rein in the Texas Lottery Commission.
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