Martin Heinrich

U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., along with local Indigenous tribes and pueblos, are urging Republican senators to restrain online gambling apps, saying the unregulated platforms pose an “existential threat” to tribal gaming rights and sovereignty.

Heinrich on Friday sent a letter to Republican chairmen of two U.S. Senate committees that are considering separate pieces of legislation that deal with digital assets like cryptocurrency. As drafted, according to the letter, both the CLARITY Act and Digital Commodity Intermediaries Act remove accountability for online platforms that allow users to bet on sports and other events online.

The “rapid expansion” of the apps, which allow users to bet on sports and otherwise engage in casino-style gambling, “poses an existential threat to tribal sovereignty by undermining the revenue that tribes rely on for government services,” Heinrich and 11 other Democratic senators wrote.

The letter argues that the apps bypass federal tribal gaming laws and also undermine states’ abilities to regulate gambling. In New Mexico, sports gambling is illegal except in-person at tribal casinos, which tribes rely on to fund services including education, public safety, healthcare and housing.

Sixteen tribes and pueblos in New Mexico signed on to the letter, according to a news release from Heinrich’s office, as did the national Indian Gaming Association and National Congress of American Indians.

The two bills are currently being negotiated in the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs and Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry. Heinrich’s letter warns that if enacted, the legislation would “effectively allow prediction markets to offer online casino-style gaming and sports betting across the United States, entirely bypassing the localized tribal-state regulatory systems required” in federal law.

Heinrich’s letter to leadership of both committees comes amid lawsuits from New Mexico’s attorney general and a group of tribes and pueblos seeking to crack down on Kalshi, one of the platforms that local plaintiffs accuse of subverting state and tribal law. Both lawsuits remain pending in state and federal courts.

U.S. Sens. Tim Scott, R-South Carolina, and John Boozman, R-Arkansas, chair the committees that are reviewing the legislation. Spokespersons for both senators did not immediately respond to Source NM’s emailed requests for comment Monday morning.

The letter urges senators to amend the bills to prohibit the platforms from enabling sports betting and also make explicit that the platforms cannot be used to circumvent existing tribal-state gaming compacts.

Without those amendments, unregulated online gambling will undermine federal treaty obligations to tribal governments and their rights to self-determination, which represent a “primary pillar of tribal sovereignty,” the letter reads.