Louisiana is taking a unique legislative route to banning sweepstakes casinos within state lines.
Six months after the state’s gaming regulator and Attorney General effectively banned sweepstakes casinos (without an official legislative ban), Rep. Bryan Fontenot pre-filed House Bill 53 on Jan. 30. The simple text aims to add “certain gambling crimes as predicate offenses for racketeering.”
The bill’s text reads:
“Racketeering activity” means committing, attempting to commit, conspiring to commit, or soliciting, coercing, or intimidating another person to commit any crime that is punishable under the following provisions of Title 14 of the Louisiana Revised Statutes of 1950, the Uniform Controlled Dangerous Substances Law, or the Louisiana Securities Law.
These additional crimes would include “gambling,” “gambling in public,” “gambling by computer,” “gambling or wagering at cockfights,” “Unlawful wager; prohibited player,” “bribery of sports participants,” and “gambling by electronic sweepstake device.”
So, what does this mean?
According to Louisiana’s Revised Statutes, any person “who violates any provision of R.S. 15:1353 shall be fined not more than one million dollars, or imprisoned at hard labor for not more than fifty years, or both.”
Additionally, any person who “violates the provisions of R.S. 15:1353 involving racketeering activity defined in R.S. 15:1352(A)(19) when the amount of the violation exceeds ten thousand dollars shall be required to serve at least five years of the sentence without benefit of probation, parole, or suspension of sentence.”
Racketeering is “not a specific crime — it’s a way of thinking about and prosecuting a variety of crimes,” G. Robert Blakey, a federal criminal law professor at Notre Dame, told CNN in 2019.
It’s also not a single act. Prosecutors must prove a pattern involving at least two instances of racketeering activity in order to convict someone. The definition is purposely broad in order to help law enforcement to target organized crime.
Under the rules, HB53 has been “referred to the Committee on Administration of Criminal Justice.”
Rep. Fontenot is not a staunch anti-gambling crusader. In April 2025, he introduced HB540, a measure that allowed truck stop casinos to increase the number of video poker machines from 50 to 60.
“We’ve worked with the video poker industry to limit some gaming as well,” he said at the time, per WBRZ.
The legislation also limited off-track betting facilities or video poker sites from being within 1,000 feet of schools and churches.
HB540 underwent multiple revisions before Gov. Jeff Landry signed it, including numerous amendments.
Louisiana’s prior actions against sweeps casinos
Louisiana doesn’t have a formal sweepstakes ban on the books. The lawmakers passed Senate Bill 181 during the 2025 session, sending it to Gov. Landry, who vetoed it. Landry said that it was unnecessary legislation because the Louisiana Gaming Control Board was “already taking active steps to combat illegal gambling” in the state.
Soon after, the LGCB worked with the state’s Attorney General’s office to send 42 cease-and-desist letters to what it considered illegal operators, including a range of sweeps gaming platforms.
“Louisiana will not tolerate illegal operators who put our citizens at risk and undermine the fairness and integrity of our gaming industry,” Christopher B. Hebert, Chairman of the LGCB, said at the time. “We will continue to use every enforcement tool available to protect the public and uphold the law.”
Louisiana defines online gambling as when a person “intentionally conducts, or directly assists in the conducting as a business of any game, contest, lottery, or contrivance whereby a person risks the loss of anything of value in order to realize a profit when accessing the Internet, World Wide Web, or any part thereof by way of any computer, computer system, computer network, computer software, or any server.”
Sweepstakes casinos could argue that Sweeps Coins, which can be redeemed for money, have no real-world value. But, it’s an uphill and costly battle for a state that probably isn’t a high-revenue market.
