On New Year’s Eve, the North Carolina Court of Appeals issued an opinion in No Limit Games, LLC v. Sheriff of Robeson County, __ N.C. App. __, __ S.E.2d __, 2024 WL 5250431 (Dec. 31, 2024). The case represents the latest development in the long-running battle over electronic sweepstakes games in North Carolina. This post provides a brief history of the issue, summarizes the recent opinion, and discusses the evolving sweepstakes industry and legal efforts to address it. History: from video poker to sweepstakes. As I wrote in this prior post, North Carolina banned slot machines in 1937. G.S. 14-306. That was seemingly sufficient until the electronic age, when video poker machines began to appear in the state’s gas stations and convenience stores. Things came to a head in 1999, when South Carolina banned such machines. The General Assembly worried that all the machines in South Carolina would simply move across the state line into North Carolina, so in 2000, it enacted former G.S. 14-306.1, prohibiting new “video gaming machines” but permitting those already in operation to remain. S.L. 2000-151. In 2006, the General Assembly decided that it had been too lenient. It repealed G.S. 14-306.1 and enacted G.S. 14-306.1A, banning all video gaming machines. See S.L. 2006-6. Litigation ensued, with several manufacturers arguing successfully that they were neither “slot machines” nor “video gaming machines” as those terms were defined in the General Statutes. In 2008, the General Assembly enacted G.S. 14-306.3, banning certain “server-based electronic game promotions,” which was more [...]
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