On May 14, 2018, the Supreme Court struck down the federal statute that had stopped individual states from authorising sports gambling. In Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Assn., the justices ruled that the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 unconstitutionally commanded states to maintain prohibitions against sports wagering schemes.
That ruling opened statehouse doors across the country for mobile sportsbooks. It did nothing for digital blackjack, virtual roulette, or online slot machines.
The federal law at issue in Murphy applied to competitive athletics alone. The statute explicitly barred states from sponsoring, operating, advertising, promoting, licensing, or authorising a gambling scheme that was "based on" competitive sporting events. As the Supreme Court observed in its written opinion, the federal prohibition targeted "sports-gambling schemes only," rather than commercial casino gambling generally.
Crucially, the federal act did not directly make sports wagering legal or illegal for individual players. Instead, it bound the hands of state legislatures by preventing them from enacting laws that licensed or authorised sports betting. When the high court invalidated that command, state lawmakers gained the power to pass sports-wagering laws if they chose to do so.
Because traditional casino gambling was never governed by the 1992 federal statute, the high court’s decision did not alter the legal status of digital casino games. Online slots and table games remained where they had always been: subject entirely to the independent choices, statutes, and criminal codes of each state legislature.
The Discrepancy in State Legalisation Numbers
Following the 2018 ruling, sports betting expanded across most of the United States, though state-level implementation took several forms.
Public counts from industry trackers show the extent of this spread, with some differences in how analysts record state authorisations. Legal Sports Report lists 30 states plus Washington, D.C., as having legalized online sports betting. Top End Sports counts 39 states alongside Washington, D.C., where sports wagering is legal in some form, with 31 states and the District of Columbia offering online or mobile wagering. Bookmakers Review similarly tracks 30 states with regulated statewide online or mobile sports betting, while recording sports betting as live in 39 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.
Individual state paths demonstrate the deliberate pace of these authorisations. In Missouri, sports betting was legalized on April 15, 2021, and officially launched several months later on September 9, 2021, according to CBS Sports.
The outcome is a map where many Americans can place a bet on an NFL game or an NBA final from a mobile phone, while remaining unable to place a digital bet on a hand of cards.
The Short List of Legal Online Casino States
While sports wagering spread to more than 30 states, real-money online casino gaming remains limited to a tiny collection of jurisdictions.
According to tracking data published by Sports Betting Dime, real-money online casino play is live in seven states: New Jersey, Delaware, Nevada, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Michigan, and Connecticut. Rhode Island has also joined the group, with online casino play live since 2024.
| State | Online casino launch |
|---|---|
| Delaware | 2013 |
| New Jersey | 2013 |
| Pennsylvania | 2019 |
| West Virginia | 2020 |
| Michigan | 2021 |
| Connecticut | 2021 |
| Rhode Island | 2024 |
The tracker maintained by Sports Betting Dime identifies Nevada as a legal online-casino state, though Delaware and New Jersey were the pioneers that established digital casino frameworks in 2013, five years prior to the Supreme Court's ruling on sports betting. Pennsylvania followed six years later in 2019. West Virginia began real-money digital casino operations in 2020, while Michigan and Connecticut introduced their regulated online casino platforms in 2021. Rhode Island launched its operations in 2024.
Outside of these specific jurisdictions, online real-money casino games remain unauthorised by state law.
The Choice Facing Sports Bettors
For a bettor living in a state that permits mobile sports betting, the absence of an online casino is often baffling. A customer can open an application, register, pass identity verification, deposit funds, and place a bet on a college football game. Yet that same mobile application offers no digital table games or slot reels.
The reason rests on how state legislation is drafted.
When state lawmakers draft and pass a sports betting bill, that statute applies strictly to athletic contests. It creates licensing fees, establishes tax rates, assigns regulatory oversight to a state gaming agency or lottery commission, and defines lawful wagering categories exclusively around athletic events. A state sports betting statute grants zero legal authority for an operator to run digital blackjack tables or online slots.
For an online casino to operate legally, the state legislature must introduce, debate, and pass an entirely separate bill that authorises internet gaming.
The practical choice for the consumer is binary. A player located in one of the 30 or 31 states with legal online sports betting can lawfully place bets on games from their mobile device. If that same player wants to play legal, real-money online casino games, they must physically travel across state lines into one of the few jurisdictions—such as New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Delaware, Michigan, Connecticut, or Rhode Island—where state lawmakers have explicitly authorised digital casino gaming.
The two forms of mobile gambling remain severed by law, waiting for individual statehouses to decide whether to take up casino legislation on its own terms.
Sources
Every figure and date above is taken from one of these documents. Where a rule belongs to another country, the text says so.