Case to Abolish Washington State Poker Ban is Progressing

In addition to running for Washington state governor on a platform stressing the right to play poker online, avid poker player and attorney Lee Rousso noted that his lawsuit to overturn the state's online gambling ban received a favorable hearing at the Court of Appeals.

Rousso is challenging the law signed by Governor Christine Gregoire March 2006, which made online gambling in Washington a Class C felony penalty, the same penalty as child pornography, stalking, drive by shootings, threatening the governor, family abandonment, heroin possession and unauthorized abortions. If convicted, persons face a maximum of 5 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000.

Washington is the only state within the United States with such a stiff penalty.

Rousso, who is also Washington state representative to the Poker Players Alliance (PPA), filed a complaint against the ban last July, ironically the first day of the World Series of Poker. His suit claims that the ban on Internet poker is a direct violation of the U.S. Constitution's commerce clause, which prohibits individual states from enacting laws that discriminate against interstate businesses.

He also noted that the ban does not put the state in compliance with the Federal Wire Act as it claims to do, but instead protects Washington's own in-state gambling industry.

"The wheels of justice grind slowly, but I am feeling pretty good about the case. I think I will get it heard on the merits within a few months," Rousso begins his PPA case update article.

The case seemed to be purposely slowed down by overwhelming demands for information as part of the discovery stage, which Rousso believes is confidential and implicates his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.

When the King County Superior Court denied his request for a protective order or other relief from producing the information, Rousso turned to the Court of Appeals for a decision.

Rousso reports that he had a sympathetic ear at the Court of Appeals, relaying court statements:

"I also think the Court of Appeals recognized that the State is overreaching: "The scope of the State's discovery requests is troubling. Indeed, at oral argument the State acknowledged that some of the interrogatories and requests for production may go beyond what is necessary to determine standing." Not exactly an endorsement of the State's position."

Rousso noted that the Court of Appeals decided not enough litigation was done over the discovery issues, so it returned the case to the lower court, saying, "In the end, the Court of Appeals declined to take the case due to its "posture," which means that it believes we didn't do enough litigating down below."

Rousso is confident that now at the Lower Court things will move along, "This time around, I expect the court to give a much clearer answer as to what information is actually relevant to the suit."

Not to be deterred in his quest, Rousso maintains that "Somewhere, sometime, a court is going to have to decide if states can regulate Internet gambling, It's inevitable, so it may as well be this case."

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