November 20, 2014

The Honorable Harry Reid

Majority Leader
U.S. Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510

The Honorable Mitch McConnell

Minority Leader
U.S. Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510

The Honorable John Boehner

Speaker of the House
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515

The Honorable Nancy Pelosi

Minority Leader
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Majority Leader Reid, Senator McConnell, Speaker Boehner, and

Representative Pelosi:
We write to inform you of our strong concerns about S.2159, Restoration of
America's Wire Act, and its companion House legislation H.R. 4301, both known as
RAWA.
While RAWA supporters contend that this legislation is a simple fix to 53 year old
Wire Act legislation on sports betting, RAWA attempts to apply federal sports
betting regulations to online gambling even though this legislation was created
decades before the invention of the internet.
The states have always led the way in regulating gambling and that is why a diverse
coalition of organizations including the Democratic Governors Association, National
Governors Association, National Conference of State Legislatures and numerous
civil libertarian, free market and conservative groups have already spoken out against
this legislation.
Regardless of your personal opinions on gambling, we encourage you to preserve the
authority of the states to prohibit or regulate gambling as the 10th Amendment
directs.
This S.2159 and H.R. 4301 are an assault on our Federalist system; so much so, that
the legislatures of New Jersey and Pennsylvania are currently considering resolutions
to Congress to ask you to vote against such legislation.1
These claims that the Wire Act provides federal authority to supersede state
authority in intrastate gambling matters have been conclusively debunked in a recent

http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/2014/Bills/AR/132_I1.HTM
http://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/PN/Public/btCheck.cfm?txtType=PDF&sessYr=2013&se
ssInd=0&billBody=H&billTyp=R&billNbr=1095&pn=4320

November 20, 2014

paper from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas by Competitive Enterprise Institute
Fellow, Michelle Minton.2
Minton documents the original debate regarding the Wire Act and shows that
Congress had a very narrow intent for the legislation because of the same federalism
concerns that exist today. Courts have repeatedly upheld that intent, which was the
basis of the Justice Departments 2011 opinion of the law.
The real intention of this bill is to remove the states 10th Amendment authority to
regulate online gambling as states see fit within their own borders. We hope you will
not allow RAWA to become yet another instance where the federal government
expands its encroachment into the states purview. State governments are more
than capable of making this decision.
Sincerely,
Grover Norquist
President
Americans for Tax Reform

Larry Hart
Director of Government Relations
American Conservative Union

Steve Pociask
President
American Consumer Institute

John Tate
President
Campaign for Liberty

Lawson Bader
President
Competitive Enterprise Institute

Andrew Langer
President
Institute for Liberty

Gov. Gary Johnson

Honorary Chairman
Our America Initiative

David Williams
President
Taxpayers Protection Alliance

Katie McAuliffe
Executive Director
Digital Liberty

Jeff Mazzella
President
Center for Individual Freedom

Tom Giovanetti
President
Institute for Policy Innovation

Andrew F. Quinlan
President
Center for Freedom and Prosperity

http://gaming.unlv.edu/papers/cgr_op29_minton.pdf