Posted Thursday, Jun. 14, 2012
BY EMILY FOXHALL
The Texas Tribune
AUSTIN -- Those who bought losing scratch-off Texas lottery tickets should still be able to enter online for a follow-up contest, according to an opinion issued by the state attorney general's office this week.
The Texas Lottery Commission offers the second-chance "promotional" drawing, nicknamed the "Luck Zone," which allows players to enter their scratch-off ticket numbers online for another chance at a prize. But in January, state Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, asked Attorney General Greg Abbott to determine whether these online submissions are legal, as well as whether the commission could conduct "any game of chance via the Internet" at all.
In the opinion, which was written Wednesday and distributed Thursday, the attorney general wrote that "it is likely" that the Lottery Commission has the authority to use the Internet to receive entries for its second-chance drawings.
The issue surfaced this year because second-chance entries arrived by mail until last fall, when the commission decided to allow ticket-holders to enter via the Internet. Thirty-four other states receive entries for promotional drawings online, Lottery Commission spokeswoman Kelly Cripe said. (The drawings themselves still are not conducted online; rather, the entries are transferred to a separate computer that is not connected to the Internet, where the second-chance drawing is conducted, Cripe said.)
Because powers granted to the commission are "sufficiently broad," the opinion explains, a court could decide that the commission has the authority to administer the second-chance prizes. As for using the Internet to collect the Luck Zone entries, the opinion concluded that federal statutes -- namely, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act and the Interstate Wire Act -- do not contradict the practice. At the state level, the Legislature has not banned such online contests, though it "could enact such a statutory prohibition," Abbott wrote.
In light of the ruling, Nelson said the Legislature should study the Lottery Commission's use of the Internet.
"With Internet gaming becoming more prevalent across the country, we needed legal guidance on what type of lottery games are currently allowable in Texas over the Internet," Nelson wrote Thursday in an e-mail. "This ruling indicates that the Lottery Commission's authority to conduct games over the Internet is fairly broad, so the Legislature will need to consider whether that is appropriate moving forward."
Cripe said that the Luck Zone drawings, with online entries, will continue but that other lottery functions will remain offline.
"In the absence of express authority, the Texas Lottery Commission has no intention of pursuing Internet lottery sales or conducting drawings via the Internet," she wrote in an e-mail.
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