The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty has sued to block Wisconsin’s new tribe-led mobile sports betting law, saying the state cannot use its gambling compact system to authorize betting on phones across the state.
The case was filed in Waukesha County Circuit Court on Aug. 5 on behalf of the Brown County Taxpayers Association and Citizens Defending Liberty. The complaint names Gov. Tony Evers, Kathy Blumenfeld of the Department of Administration, John Dillett of the Division of Gaming and Jessie Dushek of the Office of Indian Gaming and Regulatory Compliance as defendants in their official capacities.
According to the complaint, the plaintiffs seek declaratory and injunctive relief under Wisconsin law and say Waukesha County is the proper venue because the defendants are state officials. They want a judge to declare 2025 Wisconsin Act 247 unconstitutional and to bar the state from taking steps to authorize or administer statewide mobile sports wagering.
The lawsuit rests first on Wisconsin’s constitution. The complaint says voters adopted a 1993 amendment that changed the general ban from authorizing lotteries to banning gambling in any form, subject only to narrow exceptions for bingo and raffles licensed by the state, pari-mutuel on-track betting and the state lottery.
WILL argues that Act 247 crosses that line by purporting to legalize mobile sports betting throughout Wisconsin if the wager is processed through servers on American Indian lands under tribal gaming compacts. The complaint says the law creates an exception to the criminal code’s general ban on betting, even though a “bet” is ordinarily illegal and placing one is a Class B misdemeanor.
The law also relies on a hub-and-spoke model, with the server on tribal land and users elsewhere in Wisconsin placing bets through mobile devices. The suit says that structure still amounts to the legislature authorizing gambling beyond what the constitution allows.
A second argument is based on equal protection. The complaint says the law creates a benefit for some, not all, because access depends on membership in an Indian tribe and therefore on race. It says the state has no authority to confer an exclusive statewide sports betting privilege on that basis.
The filing also says Governor Evers cannot lawfully negotiate compact changes to carry out the law. It asks the court to stop him and other state officials from taking any action to authorize mobile sports betting statewide, including compact negotiations.
The dispute lands in a state where tribal gaming has long been structured through compacts. In the early 1990s, Wisconsin established agreements with all 11 federally recognized tribes, giving them exclusive rights to conduct certain gambling operations in exchange for a share of revenue. Under later precedent, tribes can expand offerings by renegotiating those compacts, and amended compacts must be approved by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Recent compact amendments negotiated with Evers allowed the Oneida Nation, Forest County Potawatomi and Ho-Chunk Nation to offer on-site sports betting. But under current law, sports bets can be placed at a casino on tribal land, not from home on an app run by the casino.
Evers signed the bill in April after all 11 tribes had urged him to do so. He also said he would not accept a plan that, in his words, would let some tribes reap great benefits while leaving others with less.
Backers of the law have disputed WILL’s reading of the constitution. Attorney Ryan Walsh wrote last fall that he did not view the bill and the related compacts as violating the U.S. Constitution, federal law or the Wisconsin Constitution.
A Marquette University Law School poll released in February found that 64% of Wisconsin voters opposed legalizing online sports betting.
