The lawsuit filed Wednesday aims to block a constitutional amendment that would legalize sports betting in Missouri from being placed on the November ballot.
The lawsuit, filed in Cole County Circuit Court, argues that the methodology used by the Missouri Secretary of State’s office to determine whether a sports betting proposal had received enough signatures is unconstitutional.
To appear on the ballot, the proposed initiative petition would need to receive signatures from 8 percent of legal voters in six of the state’s eight districts.
Lawmakers redrawn those districts following the 2020 U.S. Census, but the Secretary of State’s office did not use the new districts when calculating whether enough valid signatures were collected, the lawsuit says, but used current district boundaries to determine where people who signed petitions lived.
The lawsuit argues that the proposal would have fallen short in the 1st Congressional District if the count had been conducted based on current district boundaries.
The lawsuit alleges that the Secretary of State should have calculated the number of signatures needed for each precinct by multiplying the total number of votes in the 2020 gubernatorial election by 8 percent and then dividing that total by eight.
In this scenario, the proposal would have fallen short in both the 1st and 5th districts.
The lawsuit also alleges that the Secretary of State’s Office considered some signatures valid in the 1st and 5th Districts that were not legal.
A spokesperson for the Secretary of State’s office could not immediately be reached for comment.
The sports betting effort was launched late last year after major sports teams and casino companies suffered another setback in getting legislation passed. The public-facing portion of the campaign is being handled by the major professional sports teams, but funding ($6.3 million for the signature campaign) is being provided by FanDuel and DraftKings, the two largest online sports betting platforms.
St. Louis Cardinals president Bill DeWitt III said Wednesday’s lawsuit is “totally without merit after Missourians signed petitions en masse that will be on the November ballot.”
If approved by voters this fall, money made by the gambling industry would be taxed at 10% of net profits, after promotions and other expenses. In Kansas, which legalized sports betting in 2022, a similar tax structure resulted in a tax of $9.8 million on the $172 million wagered in June.
The ballot text would raise up to $28.9 million a year in revenue for Missouri, which is expected to be spent on education programs.