State challenges ruling on ‘designated player’ games

The Florida Department of Business and ProfessionalRegulation on Thursday took the first step in appealing a judge’s ruling about lucrative “designated player” card games at parimutuel facilities across the state.

The department, which regulates gambling facilities, filed a notice in the 1st District Court of Appeal indicating it will challenge an Aug. 26 ruling by Administrative Law Judge E. Gary Early.

In the ruling, Early said the state was wrong to do away with a rule governing the “designated player” games without replacing the regulations.

First launched in 2012, the games have become wildly popular among gamblers and are nowhosted by nearly every pari-mutuel that operates a card room in Florida.

The industry maintains that eliminating the rule, adopted in 2014, would put an end to the games. Regulators proposed doing away with the rule late last year, insisting that the way the games are being conducted— and not the games themselves — violates a state gambling law.

Thursday’s notice of appeal, as iscommon, does not detail the arguments state lawyers will make in challenging Early’s ruling.

The way designatedplayer games have been conducted and regulated at pari-mutuel facilities also has become a key issue in a separate federal-court battle between the state and the Seminole Tribe of Florida about a gambling agreement known as a “compact.”

The Seminoles contend that, by allowing the games, the state breached an agreement that granted the tribe the exclusive rights to operate “banked” card games, such as blackjack.