An appellate court ruling Friday could clear the way for online sports betting to return in Florida.

The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., threw out a lower court ruling that had halted the $2.5 billion pact between the state and the Seminole Tribe of Florida that briefly allowed gambling on phones and computers within the state’s borders in 2021.

Bob Jarvis, a law professor and gambling expert at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, said he expected the Tribe to kick off sports betting again within the next month.

“I’m sure they’ll try to do it even faster,” Jarvis said. “They will certainly be up in time for the new NFL season.”

The lawsuit by brick-and-mortar casinos and gambling parlors “had been a huge hurdle, and had been the reason that we did not have sports gambling in Florida,” Jarvis said. “That’s been swept away by the court. And they swept it away unanimously.”

The court stated that the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act “does not prohibit a gaming compact … from discussing other topics, including those governing activities outside Indian lands[.]’ In fact, IGRA expressly contemplates that a compact ‘may’ do so where the activity is ‘directly related to’ gaming.”

The main issue in the case, Jarvis said, was whether a patron could place a sports bet that would be accepted by a server that was located on tribal land. In his ruling last year, U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich called the theories used to justify the deal “fiction.”

“[Friedrich] said the patron had to actually be on reservation land in order to place a bet,’ Jarvis said. “The D.C. Circuit said as long as the bet is received on reservation land, that’s good enough.”

The Seminole Tribe itself was noncommittal. Spokesman Gary Bitner said in a statement the Tribe was “pleased with today’s unanimous decision” and that it was “fully reviewing the decision to determine its next steps.”

The Twitter account for Hard Rock Sportsbook, part of the casino chain owned by the Tribe, hinted at what they may really be thinking. It posted a video of WWE wrestler The Undertaker, thought “dead” in his coffin, opening his eyes.

But John Sowinski, who heads the anti-gambling organization No Casinos, said the decision only upheld the Secretary of Interior’s decision not to oppose the compact. Online gambling, the court said, was still subject to the state constitution, which requires voter approval for any expansion of gambling in the state, virtual or not.

“Today’s decision will not be the final word on this issue,” Sowinski said. “The will of the people will be respected, and the Florida constitution requires that Florida voters have the final word on gambling authorization.”

The compact between the Seminoles and Gov. Ron DeSantis, approved by the Legislature in 2021, gives the Tribe exclusive sports betting rights in the state for 30 years, in return for paying the state $500 million a year for at least the first five years.

It also grants the Tribe the ability to award licenses to private racetracks, jai-alai facilities and former dog-racing tracks and allows their Hard Rock casinos in Florida to offer craps and roulette, including at their flagship properties in Tampa and Hollywood.

“While we are not surprised the lower court’s perplexing ruling was unanimously overturned, this is great news for Florida,” said governor’s office spokesman Jason Mahon. “We will continue working with the Seminole Tribe of Florida to ensure the success of this historic compact – the largest gaming compact in US history – which will lead to over $20 billion in revenues for the people of Florida.”

Sowinski cited a section of the ruling that stated a compact “cannot provide independent legal authority for gaming activity that occurs outside of Indian lands, where that activity would otherwise violate state law.”

“[W]e express no opinion as to whether the Florida statute ratifying the Compact is constitutional … and as a prudential matter are best left for Florida’s courts to decide,” the ruling states.

“We’re going to work hard to make sure that the will of the people is honored,” Sawinski said. “At the end of the day, 72% of Florida voters went to the ballot box and basically took the ability of the Legislature and the governor away when it comes to legalizing casino gambling outside of tribal lands in Florida. And this Court has basically affirmed that part.”

Florida is one of 38 states to have authorized online gambling in some way, Jarvis said, with about half of those allowing some form of sports betting.

“So with this decision, the Seminoles are going to keep pushing, because they want to go national,” Jarvis said. “Their aspirations do not stop at Florida’s borders, I think you will see that states that have not approved sports betting now will have the further impetus to do so.”

The Tribe uses geofencing to determine whether a bettor is located within Florida’s borders, a technology so precise that Hard Rock International chair Jim Allen said it was able to determine whether a bet made on a Delaware River bridge took place in New Jersey or Pennsylvania.

“Just as we used to have people drive out of Florida in order to get lottery tickets, people who are on the fringes of Florida’s borders will now be driving in,” Jarvis said.

Such a situation would spur neighboring states to approve online gambling of their own, he said, as Pennsylvania and New York did after New Jersey was initially successful.

“As the old saying goes, you ain’t seen nothing yet,” he said. “We’ve seen an explosion since 2018 in sports gambling. But what’s coming will dwarf what has come so far.”