The backers of a ballot initiative to legalize slot machines in the District have filed petitions with the local elections board, while simultaneously asking the D.C. Court of Appeals for a rehearing — less than a month after judges deemed the gambling bid a violation of federal law.
The appeal to the full D.C. Court of Appeals, filed Wednesday, seeks a rehearing to overturn the unanimous Nov. 22 ruling of a three-judge panel that stopped the slots measure dead in its tracks. The District, the panel ruled last month, is explicitly banned under a 1951 federal statute from manufacturing, reconditioning, repairing, selling, transporting, possessing or using any gambling device.
Jeffrey Robinson, attorney for the slots proponents, confirmed Thursday he had filed the request for a rehearing before the full court. The petition argues the panel’s decision improperly limits the District’s legislative authority, wrongly concludes that the proposed initiative would repeal an Act of Congress and jeopardizes the operations of the city’s lottery system.
D.C. activists Dorothy Brizill, Thelma Jones and Anthony Muhammed filed a lawsuit opposing the ballot measure in May, soon after the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics approved the “video lottery terminal” ballot initiative — a proposal to build a casino in Anacostia — financed by gambling promoter Shawn Scott. The protest was tossed by the D.C. Superior Court, but the challengers were victorious on appeal.
But while the question was tied up in the courts, slots backers were busy circulating petitions to take their issue to the voters. Those petitions, 13,223 pages in all, were filed Wednesday with the elections board and immediately stamped as received but not accepted. The board will wait to process the petitions pending a court order or final decision on the litigation, according to the official receipt.
“We’re confident that the D.C. Court of Appeals will not reverse its opinion, which was very tightly and carefully reasoned and written,” Brizill wrote in an e-mail. “Today’s actions by the initiative’s sponsors are a desperate, last-ditch tactic that will not succeed, but we shall continue to oppose their efforts to establish a slots casino in the heart of historic Anacostia.”
