With the explosion of court cases to determine electronic bingo and betting laws in Wyoming, lawmakers feel that the courts are legislating from the bench. According to Representative Pat Childers, gambling laws are out of date and don’t take today’s social trends or technologies into account.

When the courts ruled that bingo machines did not meet the standards for charity bingo, bingo operators were upset. When pari-mutuels were told that their electronic betting machines, which had the Pari-Mutuel Commission’s approval, were illegal, some pari-mutuels refused to remove the machines, claiming that without the machines, horse-racing would not profitable.

Now both bingo operators and racetrack owners are crying out for a gaming commission to determine what to do with new technologies to keep them from going out of business. Legislators, for their part, are very concerned about regulating charity organizations, because there is very little accounting of their bingo earnings and their actions with them.