Wilson Building Bulletin: The fight over a British monarch’s gambling law continues

It’s a populist message bound to get anyone riled up. “Big gambling companies owe D.C. more than $300 million! Where is the D.C. Council when we need them?”

That’s what you’re greeted with when you open NoDCGamblingBailout.com, an advocacy website launched to coincide with next week’s final vote on the city’s budget for 2026. A provision in the budget would nix efforts to claw back dollars from local gambling operators – and advocates aren’t happy about it. 

“When our city is facing painful cuts to schools, housing, public safety, and health care, it is unconscionable to quietly give away desperately needed revenue through a last-minute, backroom change with no public debate,” reads a draft email that visitors are encouraged to send lawmakers.

The message is simple; the backstory less so.

We told you about this last month, but here’s the quick summary. Earlier this year an anonymous group filed a novel lawsuit against the five biggest sports betting operators in D.C., claiming that they are violating a quirky law linked to a British monarch who lived three centuries ago. That law – colloquially known as the Statute of Anne – allows for anyone who loses more than $25 in a bet to sue to recover that money, or for a third party to do so on their behalf. The lawsuit argues that the sports betting operators – Caesars, FanDuel, DraftKings, BetMGM, and Fanatics – have pulled in millions above the $25 threshold from losing bettors in D.C., and should thus be forced to pay it back.

Legal filings have been flying back and forth in federal court since, but in late May a short provision was dropped into Mayor Muriel Bowser’s budget bill clarifying that the Statute of Anne doesn’t apply to sports betting, which was legalized in D.C. in late 2018. The anonymous plaintiffs – known only as the Delaware-based D.C. Gambling Recovery LLC – have since fought back, hiring a prominent former councilmember to lobby the council (at an expense of $20,000 a month) to remove the provision from the budget bill, which will be finalized on Monday.

In a letter sent to lawmakers earlier this month, they argued that it is “fundamentally unfair” to quietly pass a law like this in the midst of litigation. Speaking more directly to the council’s concerns, though, the group got to the point: if the lawsuit is successful, D.C. could actually be in line for half of what the sports betting companies would owe, roughly $300 million. (The Statute of Anne specifies that half of any damages from a successful lawsuit go to the person who sued, the other half to the city.) “It is not clear why the District, given its current fiscal challenges, would voluntarily eliminate the possibility of receiving a significant amount of revenue to support its safety-net,” it writes.

Now, it’s clear that the five sports betting companies aren’t simply going to part with hundreds of millions of dollars without a long legal fight. They’re also well represented by lobbyists in the Wilson Building. But the city may have its own self-interest to consider: For the first few years that sports betting was legal in D.C., the only legal operator was… the city itself. (Yes, that means someone could sue D.C. to recover gambling losses.)

D.C. Gambling Recovery is asking that if the council is going to do anything about the Statute of Anne, it should do so through the regular legislative process, which would allow for a public hearing. “[E]xploiting the District’s budget process to short circuit public input and intervene in a private lawsuit on behalf of gambling operators is wrong,” writes the group. “And it raises significant questions about whose interest the Council is protecting: the public or gambling operators.”

Of course, it’s tough to know how much D.C. Gambling Recovery is operating in the public interest, because they won’t disclose who they are – as much as we’ve asked, the group won’t say who is behind this effort. In the letter to the council, their attorneys say it’s a “company created by several public-interest oriented lawyers.” Those lawyers, though, aren’t identified. (D.C. law requires LLCs to list their owners, but Delaware, where D.C. Gambling Recovery was incorporated, doesn’t.)

We’ll keep our eyes on whether any councilmember is enticed enough by the promise of $300 million in ill-gotten sports betting revenue to propose amending the budget bill ahead of next week’s vote.

Time is money, D.C. edition

If an age-old law governing gambling losses in D.C. seems quirky, get a load of this. 

Last month we reported that the D.C. Board of Elections had given an initial green light to a proposed ballot initiative that – if approved by voters – would repeal Daylight Saving Time in the city, effectively doing away with the annual springtime tradition of moving the clocks up an hour. The proponent told me that changing the clocks back and forth twice a year is bad for people’s health and circadian rhythms, but plenty of critics of social media pointed out the many logistical nightmares that could result from D.C. being an hour off both Maryland and Virginia for half the year.

Turns out they're not the only ones worrying about that. In a new fiscal analysis of the proposed initiative unveiled earlier this month, D.C. Chief Financial Officer Glen Lee warns that repealing Daylight Saving Time would be potentially chaotic. 

“Several District agencies, such as the Child and Family Services Agency, Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services, and Office of State Superintendent of Education, provide services that extend across jurisdictional boundaries. Regional partnerships such as the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority operate across multiple jurisdictions that will be affected by eliminating DST. The District's court system is operated by the federal government, which would still observe DST. Sorting out scheduling conflicts and coordinating cross-jurisdictional program logistics will require resources that are not quantifiable at this time,” his office dryly wrote.

That he brought up resources, though, is important. Ballot initiatives can do a lot in D.C. – eliminate the tipped wage, legalize the possession of marijuana, and bring ranked-choice voting to the city’s elections – but they can’t force the city to spend money. And Lee says just upgrading IT systems to accommodate the change would cost the city more than $16 million.  

“The District of Columbia uses at least ninety IT systems across multiple agencies to support the government's day-to-day operations,” he wrote. “Many of these IT systems will need to be modified to update time zone logic, hardcoded DST rules, and timestamping functions to maintain standard time year round. Once modified, these systems will need to be tested on an ongoing basis to ensure full functionality and minimize service degradation.”

The elections board has scheduled a hearing on Aug. 8 to formulate the language of the initiative, after which proponents? t would be allowed to start collecting the estimated 25,000 signatures it would take to get it on the ballot. This new fiscal analysis, though, could force the board to think twice about whether the initiative can even legally qualify for the ballot. Only time – standard or otherwise – will tell.