“The Seminole Tribe of Florida is pleased with today’s unanimous decision,” said Gary Bitner, a spokesperson for tribe. “It is a positive outcome for the Seminole Tribe and the people of Florida, and for all of Indian Country. The Tribe is fully reviewing the decision to determine its next steps.”

Jason Mahon, a spokesman for DeSantis, also praised the decision.

“While we are not surprised the lower court’s perplexing ruling was unanimously overturned, this is great news for Florida,” Mahon said in an email. “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…”

Hamish Hume, a lawyer representing the casinos that had challenged the deal, noted that the court had “recognized” that federal gambling laws “cannot authorize gambling off of Indian lands, but then upheld a compact that purports on its face to do exactly that. We respectfully disagree with that decision, and are evaluating our possible next steps.”

The gambling deal was a significant victory at the time for DeSantis since he had to personally lobby state lawmakers to approve the agreement in May 2021. It not only authorized sports betting, but it authorized the tribe to add craps and roulette to its existing casinos and build additional casinos on the tribe’s Hollywood reservation, which is already home to Hard Rock Hotel & Casino.

In 2021, U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich with the District of Columbia said the compact was illegal because it allowed people to place sports bets anywhere in the state in violation of federal laws governing gambling on Native American lands. The ruling came in reaction to twin lawsuits filed by rival casino owners, longtime South Florida gambling opponents and a statewide anti-gambling group against U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, who had declined to block the compact.

Friedrich, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, also concluded that the only sports betting that could be allowed outside of tribal lands in Florida is through a citizen initiative. Voters in 2018 approved an amendment — backed by the Seminole Tribe and Disney — that said voters must approve any future expansion of casino gambling.

DeSantis and legislators tried to sidestep that ballot initiative by insisting the new compact was legal because the actual processing of bets occurred on tribal lands even though someone could use a mobile app anywhere in the state. Friedrich said she could not accept this “fiction” and added that, “when a federal statute authorizes an activity only at specific locations, parties may not evade that limitation by ‘deeming’ their activity to occur where it, as a factual matter, does not.”

The District of Columbia Court of Appeals, however, rejected Friedrich’s conclusions.

The Friday opinion, authored by Judge Robert L. Wilkins, concluded that federal authorities responsible for reviewing the compact had approached it correctly and added that “whether it is otherwise lawful for a patron to place bets from non-tribal land within Florida may be a question for that State’s courts, but it is not the subject of this litigation and not for us to decide.”

“We hold only that the Secretary’s decision not to act on the Compact was consistent with [federal gambling regulations],” Wilkins wrote.

He added, “We express no opinion as to whether the Florida statute ratifying the compact is constitutional” under Florida law.