An initiative to install slot terminals in the District is invalid on its face because federal law bans the use of gambling devices in the nation’s capital, the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday.
Pending further appeal, the decision should end controversial efforts to build a slots casino in Southeast D.C. Despite vigorous community and political opposition, slots backers had won permission from the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics to collect voter signatures to get the matter on the ballot, likely in 2008.
“I’m ecstatic,” said Thelma Jones, a co-plaintiff in the complaint against the elections board. “This is a good Thanksgiving gift for us. I just hope they don’t try to come back again, not in my lifetime.”
The appeals court ruled the video lottery terminal effort is specious, because the federal Johnson Act makes it illegal to “manufacture, recondition, repair, sell, transport, possess or use any gambling device” in the District. Essentially, “approval of the VLT Gambling Initiative would exceed the legislative powers granted to the District and its citizens by the Home Rule Act…” the court ruled.
Congress, the court decided, has the power to legislate for the District “in all cases whatsoever.”
“This means that the petitions for the initiative, which its sponsors intended to submit to the DC Board of Elections and Ethics in December, are moot, and cannot be submitted,” Dorothy Brizill, executive director of D.C. Watch and co-plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in an e-mail.
In their filings, slots backers claimed the Johnson Act explicitly allows the District to opt out of the anti-gambling provision, but the appeals court vehemently disagreed.
Brizill and two co-plaintiffs sued the elections board in May, soon after it ruled in the gambling promoters’ favor. The complaint was dismissed in Superior Court in June and immediately appealed.
Attorneys for the defendants could not be reached for comment. The elections board office was closed Wednesday.
