## Facts

- Congress enacted the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (UIGEA), which bars a “gambling business” from knowingly accepting certain payments (including credit, electronic fund transfers, checks, and similar instruments) in connection with another person’s participation in “unlawful Internet gambling.”
- UIGEA defines “unlawful Internet gambling” to include the knowing transmission of a bet or wager over the Internet when the bet or wager is illegal where it is initiated or where it is received.
- The statute provides for criminal penalties and civil enforcement and assigns federal agencies responsibilities related to implementation and enforcement.
- Interactive Media Entertainment & Gaming Association, Inc. (Interactive) is an Internet-gaming advocacy organization whose members operated online gambling businesses that were lawful in the jurisdictions where those businesses were physically located.
- Interactive alleged its members accepted payments tied to customers’ Internet wagering without independently confirming whether each wager was lawful in the customer’s jurisdiction.
- Interactive filed a pre-enforcement federal action against the United States Attorney General (Alberto Gonzales) and federal agencies and officials involved in enforcing or implementing UIGEA (collectively, the government).
- Interactive sought declaratory and injunctive relief to bar enforcement of UIGEA, asserting that UIGEA violated the First Amendment, the Tenth Amendment, the Ex Post Facto Clause, and a constitutional right to privacy/substantive due process, and that UIGEA conflicted with U.S. treaty obligations and a World Trade Organization (WTO) ruling.
- The government moved to dismiss the complaint.

## Issues

1. Whether Interactive (including through associational standing) alleged a sufficiently concrete, imminent injury to bring a pre-enforcement challenge to UIGEA.
2. Whether UIGEA’s restrictions on accepting payments for “unlawful Internet gambling” violate the First Amendment because they burden speech or association connected to online gambling operations.
3. Whether UIGEA is unconstitutionally vague or otherwise violates due process by defining “unlawful Internet gambling” through underlying state and federal gambling laws and by using “where initiated or received” as a legality reference point.
4. Whether UIGEA violates the Tenth Amendment, the Ex Post Facto Clause, or substantive due process/right-to-privacy principles, or is invalid based on asserted treaty obligations or a WTO ruling.

## Decision

- The court granted the government’s motion to dismiss.
- The court concluded that Interactive did not establish justiciability (including standing and/or ripeness) for substantial parts of its pre-enforcement challenge.
- To the extent the court reached the merits, it rejected Interactive’s constitutional theories and declined to invalidate UIGEA.
- Any request for preliminary injunctive relief was denied as moot following dismissal.

## Legal Principles

- Associational standing requires (1) at least one member with standing in their own right, (2) a connection between the claims and the association’s purpose, and (3) claims and requested relief that do not require individualized participation by members.
- In a pre-enforcement challenge, a plaintiff must show more than generalized uncertainty or a speculative fear of prosecution; there must be a concrete injury or a credible, non-speculative threat of enforcement tied to the plaintiff’s or members’ intended conduct.
- A statute that targets commercial conduct—here, the knowing acceptance of funds connected to unlawful gambling—does not become a First Amendment violation merely because the regulated businesses also communicate with customers online.
- A law is not void for vagueness if persons of ordinary intelligence can understand what is prohibited and enforcement is not standardless; using other sources of law to supply a predicate “unlawful” element does not, by itself, make a statute unconstitutionally vague.
- A “knowingly” requirement can narrow a statute’s reach and reduce vagueness concerns by focusing liability on actors aware of the relevant facts.
- The Ex Post Facto Clause prohibits retroactive criminal punishment; a statute aimed at future transactions is not ex post facto simply because it affects existing business models.
- There is no recognized fundamental constitutional right to engage in Internet gambling; related substantive due process/privacy claims are reviewed under rational-basis scrutiny.
- A Tenth Amendment claim generally fails when a federal statute regulates private actors within Congress’s enumerated powers and does not compel states or state officials to administer or enforce a federal program.
- Alleged conflicts with treaties or WTO decisions do not automatically supply a private, judicially enforceable basis to invalidate a federal statute absent domestic law making those international commitments enforceable in court.

## Conclusion

In *Interactive Media Entertainment & Gaming Association, Inc. v. Gonzales*, the District of New Jersey dismissed an Internet-gaming trade association’s pre-enforcement attack on UIGEA’s payment-processing restrictions, finding major standing/ripeness problems and rejecting the asserted First Amendment, vagueness/due process, Tenth Amendment, ex post facto, privacy, and international-obligation theories, leaving UIGEA in force.


Interactive Media Entertainment & Gaming Association, Inc. v. Gonzales, 2008 WL 5586713 (2008)