- Act 247 adds one paragraph to state law, exempting mobile sports wagers from Wisconsin’s criminal definition of a bet.
- The three-count complaint asks the court to bar Gov. Tony Evers from negotiating compact amendments implementing the law.
- A third count calls the law’s tribal-server requirement a racial classification barred by the 14th Amendment.
- Each defendant has 45 days from service to answer in Waukesha County Circuit Court.
WAUKESHA, Wis. – Two taxpayer groups sued Gov. Tony Evers and three state officials on Aug. 5 in Waukesha County Circuit Court, asking a judge to void Act 247 and to bar the state from negotiating the tribal compact amendments Wisconsin’s mobile sports betting market cannot open without.
The Law Is One Paragraph And Licenses Nobody
2025 Wisconsin Act 247 began as Assembly Bill 601. Evers signed it April 9, and the state published it April 10. It creates a single paragraph of statute, Wis. Stat. § 945.01(1)(h), and does nothing more. The act names no regulator, no license application, no tax rate and no operator, unlike the licensing statutes behind most states with online sports betting.
Making a bet in Wisconsin is a Class B misdemeanor under Wis. Stat. § 945.02(1). Act 247 works by subtraction, removing one class of wager from the statutory definition of “bet.” The carve-out applies only when the bettor is physically in Wisconsin, uses a mobile or other electronic device, the server conducting the wager sits on a tribe’s Indian lands in the state, and the wager runs under a gaming compact “originally entered into prior to April 1, 1993.”
That structure is the whole case. The complaint argues that by decriminalizing the wager the Legislature authorized it, and Article IV, Section 24 of the state constitution says “the legislature may not authorize gambling in any form” outside bingo, raffles, pari-mutuel on-track betting and the state lottery. Voters wrote that language in 1993 under a ballot question headed “Gambling expansion prohibited.”
The Act Pegs Itself To Compacts Signed Before The 1993 Vote
The date in the carve-out is not incidental. Wisconsin’s 11 federally recognized tribes signed their original compacts between 1991 and 1992, each for a seven-year term, after a federal district court held in Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians v. Wisconsin that the state’s treatment of casino-style gaming was regulatory rather than prohibitory and that it had to negotiate. Those compacts still govern tribal casino gaming among legal Wisconsin gambling sites.
Those agreements predate the amendment now being invoked against the act. By limiting the exemption to compacts formed before April 1, 1993, the Legislature anchored statewide mobile betting to instruments that existed before the voters acted. The complaint treats that as beside the point, because the exemption itself is new even if the compacts are not.
Claim Two Aims At The Negotiating Table, Not The Statute
The second count is the one that bears on a launch. The complaint asks the court to declare that any attempt by Evers to amend the compacts to carry out Act 247 would be ultra vires, and its request for relief asks the court to enjoin the defendants from “negotiating any compact amendments to allow that activity to occur.”
Act 247 by itself puts no app on a phone. The compacts have to be amended before the tribes can run statewide mobile books, and the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act requires federal approval before an amended compact takes effect. A ruling on the second count alone would halt the process at the exact step Wisconsin has reached, leaving the state without a regulated mobile option among online gambling sites for USA players.
Evers committed to that step the day he signed. In an April 9 signing statement to the Assembly, he called the legislation the beginning of a conversation rather than the end of one, and said he had heard from each of the 11 affected tribes.
He used the same statement to set terms. Evers said he strongly supports a joint venture in which each tribe contributes and each tribe benefits in equal shares, and said he would not accept a plan that leaves some tribes with crumbs while others reap great benefits.
He framed the law as a source of state revenue for mental health programs and the opioid response. The complaint alleges, on information and belief, that Evers met tribal leaders June 1 to begin negotiations.
Two Taxpayer Groups And Three Officials Below The Governor
The plaintiffs are the Brown County Taxpayers Association, which the complaint says has more than 100 dues-paying members, and Citizens Defending Liberty, which has eight members and collects no dues. Both are unincorporated associations, and both rest standing on Wisconsin’s taxpayer-suit doctrine, citing Rabiebna v. Higher Educational Aids Board, 2026 WI 20, for the rule that taxpayers may challenge illegal expenditures of public funds.
The theory has a pressure point, and the complaint meets it head on. Mobile betting is expected to send money to the state rather than cost it, so the plaintiffs identify the illegal expenditure as the new enforcement architecture officials would have to build, and cite a 1974 decision for the proposition that it is immaterial whether an illegal expenditure produced a net saving.
Besides Evers, the suit names Department of Administration Secretary Kathy Blumenfeld, Division of Gaming Administrator John Dillett and Indian Gaming Audit Director Jessie Dushek, each in an official capacity. The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty is counsel for the plaintiffs. Daniel Lennington, Lucas Vebber and Kirsten Atanasoff are listed on the filing, which Atanasoff signed electronically.
The Equal Protection Count Reaches Every Compact
The third count argues the tribal-server requirement is a racial classification under the 14th Amendment, because all 11 Wisconsin tribes set membership by blood quantum or direct lineal descent. The count cites Rice v. Cayetano for the proposition that a state violates the Constitution when it assigns a benefit to an indigenous group based on that status.
It also argues that the authority recognized in Morton v. Mancari for Congress to legislate with respect to tribes has never been extended to state legislatures. That count asks for a declaration reaching not only the act but “any compacts carrying it out.”
Defendants Have 45 Days To Answer
The summons gives each defendant 45 days from service to file a written answer. The action is brought under Wis. Stat. § 806.04, the declaratory judgment statute, and venue was designated in Waukesha County because every defendant is a state officer sued in an official capacity. The filed copy carries case code 30701 with the case number left blank.