Is Online Casino Gambling Legal in the US? State-by-State, Not Federal

Each state determines whether and how it permits real-money online casino gaming, subject to applicable federal law. As of 2026, eight states have authorised real-money online casino gaming: New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Connecticut, West Virginia, Delaware, Rhode Island and Maine. Seven have operational markets, while Maine has legalised online casino gaming but had not yet launched its market. The regulatory models also differ from state to state, including the number of permitted operators, licensing structure and relationship with land-based casinos or tribal entities.

New Jersey was the first state to launch a regulated online casino market, in November 2013. It remains one of the largest and most established US iGaming jurisdictions, but its rules do not automatically apply in other states.

The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (UIGEA) is frequently misunderstood. UIGEA does not itself establish a nationwide prohibition on all Internet gambling. Instead, it prohibits businesses engaged in betting or wagering from knowingly accepting certain payments connected with unlawful Internet gambling, while defining that term by reference to applicable federal and state gambling law.

UIGEA also contains exemptions and rules of construction affecting lawful state and tribal gambling activity. As a result, the existence of a state licence can be important, but UIGEA should not be reduced to the simple proposition that every transaction involving a licensed operator is automatically outside its scope — the underlying gambling activity and the statutory requirements still matter.

The Federal Wire Act of 1961 is another federal law frequently cited in discussions of internet gambling. The Department of Justice’s 2011 Office of Legal Counsel opinion concluded that the Wire Act’s relevant prohibitions were limited to sports betting. In 2018, the DOJ issued a new OLC opinion taking a broader view of the statute.

That broader interpretation was challenged in court. In New Hampshire Lottery Commission v. Rosen, the First Circuit held in 2021 that the Wire Act’s prohibitions apply to interstate wire communications concerning bets or wagers on sporting events or contests. The Fifth Circuit had previously adopted a sports-betting-focused interpretation. The resulting legal history is important, but the Wire Act should not be presented as a general federal licence for online casino gambling.

US residents can encounter offshore gambling websites that accept customers from jurisdictions where no licensed online-casino market exists. An offshore licence from Curaçao, Malta, Panama or another foreign jurisdiction does not give an operator a US state gaming licence, and the absence of a US state licensing regime should not be interpreted as affirmative permission to use an offshore casino. The legal position also differs depending on whether the question concerns the operator, a payment intermediary, or an individual player — these are genuinely distinct questions, not one single rule.

Recent federal enforcement illustrates why this distinction matters. In June 2026, the Department of Justice announced that a California man, Jason Noah Feinman of Calabasas, was sentenced to 27 months in prison for tax evasion, operating an illegal gambling business, and money laundering, after running a Costa Rica-based platform that enabled other unlicensed gambling operators to facilitate betting activity for their customers. The case concerned operating and facilitating an illegal gambling business, not a blanket rule about individual players. It nevertheless demonstrates that offshore-based gambling infrastructure connected to the US remains an active federal enforcement target.

The US sports-betting market expanded rapidly after the Supreme Court’s 2018 decision in Murphy v. NCAA invalidated the federal Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act’s prohibition on state-authorised sports wagering. Online casino gaming has expanded much more slowly, and a state permitting mobile or online sports betting does not necessarily permit online slots, roulette, blackjack or other casino games — sports betting and iGaming are generally authorised through separate state legislation and regulatory frameworks.

US online-casino legality is jurisdiction-specific. An operator authorised in New Jersey is not automatically authorised in New York, California, Texas or any other state. Operator licences, permitted brands, approved domains and geolocation requirements must be checked against the relevant state regulator, and our current Level.casino database does not identify any of the internationally licensed operators in our dataset as holding a US state online-casino licence.