Sports Betting will be back on the ballot in the Show-Me State.
Cole County Circuit Court Judge Daniel Green has ruled against a legal challenge that would have kept sports betting off the Missouri ballot. The challenge was against a ballot initiative that gathered enough signatures to get the industry on the ballot. The ruling means that residents can vote to legalize sports betting in the state this November.
In his ruling, Judge Daniel Green shared that the legal challenge lacked enough evidence. He shared a 12-page ruling that emphasized the high bar legal challenges to ballot initiatives must clear.
“Lawsuits seeking to remove an initiative petition from the ballot after it has been certified as sufficient by the secretary of state are highly disfavored.” Green shared in the ruling. “When courts are called upon to intervene in the [ballot] initiative process, they must act with restraint, trepidation, and a healthy suspicion of the partisan that would use the judiciary to prevent the initiative process from taking its course.”
A pair of political consultants filed the legal challenge. They claimed that the Secretary of State made an error when verifying the signatures from the sports betting ballot initiative. Any Missouri initiative requires a certain number of signatures from different voting districts, which the state verified.
Missouri recently redrew its voting maps, changing borders across the state. The legal challenge claims that the old maps were used when gathering and approving signatures. However, Judge Green found they did not provide enough evidence to prove that claim.
Those behind the challenge may appeal the ruling, but they will unlikely find a different result.
Not long after the ruling, a new coalition to oppose sports betting was launched. Missourians Against the Deceptive Online Gambling Amendment will work to educate the public on the dangers of sports betting and allow outside parties to influence the law in the Show-Me State.
While the new group does have a compelling message, there are questions about who has been behind these legal challenges. Legal sports betting bills have been dying on the floor thanks to a group that wanted to expand them to include slot-style lottery games. That group was small but effectively filibustered any attempt to pass sports betting bills.
The ballot initiative was started to circumvent those lawmakers, but it seems they may not be done fighting quite yet. While the forces behind the opposition remain relatively unknown, it seems to have ties to Missouri legislatures.
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