Seminole Tribe of Florida

Florida Education Champions, a political committee sponsoring the sports-betting measure, got only 472,927 of the 900,000 signatures required to place the proposal on the November ballot.

The U.S. Department of the Interior filed a notice that it intends to appeal a ruling that invalidated a 30-year deal negotiated by Gov. Ron DeSantis and Seminole tribal leaders and ratified by state lawmakers in May.

The Seminole Tribe “will temporarily suspend operations of its mobile app in Florida” following the decision.

It was not immediately clear whether the Seminoles plan to suspend their online sports-betting operations after the appeals court’s decision.

The emergency motion comes after a U.S. district judge Dabney Friedrich ruled that the gambling deal between the state and the tribe violated federal law.

In denying the stay, Friedrich wrote, in part, that a stay during an appeal is an “extraordinary remedy” and that the tribe did not meet legal tests to justify it.

Although the compact deems sports betting to occur at the location of the tribe’s servers, the judge wrote that “this court cannot accept that fiction.”

There’s no accurate count of the number of Native American women who go missing or are murdered every year in the United States.

The gambling deal includes allowing people throughout the state to use mobile devices to place sports bets that are run through computer servers on tribal property. But a key issue in the lawsuit is whether the IGRA allows the Seminoles to accept bets that are placed off tribal property.

Gov. Ron DeSantis opened the door to sports betting in Florida — viewed as one of the nation’s most-fertile grounds for digital wagering — through a deal signed with tribe Chairman Marcelus Osceola Jr.

Two pari-mutuel facilities contend that allowing people to place sports bets while off tribal property violates federal laws.

A political committee backed by two major online sports-betting platforms has filed a proposed constitutional amendment to appear on the 2022 ballot.