The Poker Lab Rat

A Federal Judge in the state of New Jersey has assigned September 4 as the hearing date for its lawsuit against U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The lawsuit seeks to overturn the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA).  Judge Mary L. Cooper of the US District Court in Trenton, NJ will hear the matter.

While none of the team at PokerLabRat.com are US law experts, the Interactive Media Entertainment & Gaming Association (iMEGA) does apparently have a reasonable case.

iMEGA’s objective is to get the court to declare the UIGEA unconstitutional and unenforceable as it violates the First Amendment’s rights to freedom of speech and commercial association as well as the Tenth Amendment’s protections of states’ rights to regulate online gambling.

IN a recent interview Joe Brennan, Jr., iMEGA founder and a former executive of AOL, said “The UIGEA can still be enforced prior to the September 4 date,but we feel confident that the judge will prevent that from happening.”

The honorable Judge Cooper will review the briefs submitted by iMEGA and the defendants (US DoJ, FTC and Federal Reserve) to determine if she will grant iMEGA’s request for a temporary restraining order (TRO) preventing the enforcement of UIGEA.

Judge Cooper can decide whether she will rule on the TRO request based on the submitted briefs, or can order a separate hearing to hear oral arguments and testimony before making a ruling.

iMEGA waited less than a day after the submission of their brief in support of their request for an injunction preventing the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) from taking effect for a Federal Circuit Court judge to order a hearing in the matter.

“We’re very happy that the Court has set a date for hearing our case. We’re confident that once the Act is given an impartial examination, the Court will see the problems it creates and the kind of slippery-slope precedent we’ll be left with if the law stands.

“We’ve laid out our argument on the merits of granting a TRO for the enforcement of UIGEA for the Court,” Brennan said Tuesday. “From iMEGA’s standpoint, we did not want the defendants (US Dept. of Justice, Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Reserve) to use the allowed 60 days in their summonses in order to stall and give themselves more time to promulgate the regulations for UIGEA.”

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